Navy Guantanamo Bay Part I

 
After sailing around in the Caribbean for a while we finally headed for our target destination: Guantanamo Bay. Yes, that Guantanamo Bay. Known officially as the 'Naval Station Guantanamo Bay' or Gitmo as it is commonly called, the station is the oldest US overseas naval facility.

Acquired just after the Spanish-American War, the 45 square mile naval station is rented from Cuba for $4,085 a year. As you may imagine, the Cuban government is unhappy that it is there. Imagine how scary it was to be on that base during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Greene went to Gitmo because there are some islands nearby that are used for target practice and we were going to attempt to sink them. Remember my mentioning how heavy and slippery those projectiles were in the 5-Inch 38-Caliber gun? Now add in a little stifling heat and humidity, jam everyone into close quarters and fire your cannon for ten or more hours a day.

There was a really good reason for doing all that. The experience was getting the gun team better, faster and more cohesive and the fire control people were getting better at aiming. You have to practice and sometimes battles are waged during uncomfortable conditions.

So, late in the afternoon one day, we were coming into our dock at Gitmo and it was time for one of those life-changing events.

Even though most of us had been working at one of our jobs all day blowing that poor, defenseless island to bits, many of us had another job when we came into port. After all, you can't just park the ship and put money in the meter, there's a whole process to mooring a ship. Entire books have been written about it. 

One must carefully position the ship next to the pier and use the engines to bring it close enough to toss the lines to the men waiting on the pier. No, they are not ropes. In the Navy, you don't refer to a rope as a 'rope', it is a 'line'. Geez. Identification is made by the width of the line for example '2-inch nylon line'.

And part of that process is to toss these devices you can see on the left here called 'fenders' to hang over the side which prevent the ship from rubbing directly against the pier saving the paint. You have to save the paint!

 It was bad enough going over the side to scrape paint with having to do so unnecessarily.

If you dropped anchor, like we did in the harbor at Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas, that was a completely different process. Hearing those chains going down is quite a thrill to hear. It sounds like... Liberty!

 But this particular day, the Greene was coming in to moor at a pier at Guantanamo Bay and the Executive Officer would be bringing her in. Because even officers need to get experience. 

And experience was what we got.