# Indian Ocean Adventures Two



## Pecos (Aug 2, 2020)

Ships transiting the Suez Canal going South enter the canal in the morning and drop anchor in the salt water lake that is in about half way down. At the same time, ships going North head into the canal and drop anchor on the other side of the lake. When both groups are in the lake they pass each other and head into their desired direction through the narrow passage. This takes time and while you are at anchor, it is traditional that bold sailors take a swim. Since the lake has sharks, sharpshooters are stationed at the high points watching out for us. I always enjoyed the swim, and the beer that we drank afterwards in the motor whale boat that traditionally gets lowered over the side for two cold beers since you cannot consume alcohol onboard a Navy Ship. Those two beers tasted good in that desert heat and made the climb back up the rope ladder easy.

When you exit the Canal into the Red Sea, warships always go first, unfortunately one of the dim wit sailors from the ship's crew had been placing bets that he was going to jump over board. And he did, right there at the entrance of the Red Sea with nearly a hundred big tanker and cargo ships right behind us. It took several hour to retrieve his sorry rear end having to maneuver around those big ships whose Captains were not happy. The young man was quickly busted, given a non-reenlisted discharge code and put on the next available military flight to some time in the brig before getting tossed out. He is lucky that he survived. 

We stopped off in Port Sudan for a port call, played baseball. Along with the other Officers, I was required to go to a "Goat Grab" with the Sudanese Navy. That goat was not very tasty. As soon as I could break away, I went back to the ship and had a peanut butter sandwich. Port Sudan was overrun with drugs and sure enough some of the sailors (not mine) smuggled drugs back on the ship despite the searches.

In those days, all ships entering or exiting the Red Sea to the Indian stayed on the Western side as they passed near Yemen. The Yemenis in those days had the nasty habit of shooting at vessels with their army tanks. I have heard that they did hit a couple of cargo ships, 

When we got into the Indian Ocean we were greeted by this Russian Krivak, a very heavily armed cruiser. Who followed us for days. I could not get a good picture of her on that trip, but on my next trip I did get this shot of her at anchor just South of Oman. You can look at her and see that she would be a nasty customer with a full array of guns, missiles, and quite a variety of search radar and tracking systems.

 

We joined formed a task group with another US Warship and the French Navy which came out of the port of Djibouti to exercise with us. Their assets included the French Carrier Clementine and their pilots were most impressive. The Krivak was impressed as well and put more space between us. We had a small exchange of crew members and I let my French linguist an one other sailor go over to a French Destroyer for four days. They were excited by the opportunity to enjoy French wine with their meals. The excitement did not last long and they came back complaining about the food and the cockroaches that were everywhere.  

This is a photo of my team:


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## Aunt Marg (Aug 2, 2020)

Absolutely love this, Pecos!

So appreciate you sharing the fragments of history with us along with these wonderful pictures!


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## oldman (Aug 7, 2020)

You guys got to keep your hair? No fair. In Vietnam, we were better off having as less hair as possible. It was so darn hot and the humidity was stifling. Man, I thought I was going to melt.


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## Pecos (Aug 7, 2020)

oldman said:


> You guys got to keep your hair? No fair. In Vietnam, we were better off having as less hair as possible. It was so darn hot and the humidity was stifling. Man, I thought I was going to melt.


Oh, you guys had it far, far r ougher than we did. Our weather was very hot but dry. My team spend the bulk of their time inside with more air conditioning than we wanted. This timeframe was still in the Admiral era after he declared "let there be hair" in one of his ZGrams. I grew a beard myself at one point, and you can see that a couple of my sailors had beards despite the heat when you stepped out on deck or went ashore.


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## OneEyedDiva (Aug 27, 2021)

Thank you so much for sharing your very interesting stories and photos with us. I'm looking forward to more.


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## oldman (Aug 28, 2021)

Pecos said:


> Oh, you guys had it far, far r ougher than we did. Our weather was very hot but dry. My team spend the bulk of their time inside with more air conditioning than we wanted. This timeframe was still in the Admiral era after he declared "let there be hair" in one of his ZGrams. I grew a beard myself at one point, and you can see that a couple of my sailors had beards despite the heat when you stepped out on deck or went ashore.


The humidity at times was horrible. Very tropic at times. When the rains came, it was refreshing at first, but after days of it raining, we were wishing for it to clear off.


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