Brad's 1st Underway

Brad recently went on his first at-sea ride on the USS Columbus (as in, Ohio; Brad's regular boat is the USS Columbia, as in South Carolina/Missouri/Illinois). His boat wanted him to get some experience on a working boat while his submarine is in the shipyard being fixed up. The USS Columbus has recently come out of the shipyard receiving the same upgrades as Brad's boat is receiving right now. He went along for a two week ride so that he could get his engineering qualifications completed. Here are some pictures of the day he left and then when he came back.Here we are early in the morning dropping Brad off at the pier. The big black thing with the yellow crane in front is the sail of the submarine. Luckily my sister had just come in to visit us so I did not have to go through this for the first time alone while eight months pregnant and very emotional. Here she is with her brother-in-law before he went in to the big briney deep. You can see more of the sail in the background. After we dropped him off, Missy and I went off to see Hawaii and do touristy things. We headed back to Pearl Harbor in the afternoon to see his boat actually leave for the underway.
Here is the boat from the other side of the harbor. It is kind of hard to see but the submarine is in the middle of the picture with what looks to be a crane coming out of the sail. The sail is the big black thing that sticks out of the water when the boat is surfaced. It is the place that the periscope comes out and also it is the place that people come out to look out when they are on the surface. Missy and I went over to Hickam Air Force Base to the officer's club to watch the boat actually leave the harbor. I can't tell you how magnificant of a sight this really is. The anticipation is killer because the boat was delayed and there was not really a good place to see since they were doing construction. But when they actually pulled by it was a pretty awesome sight. There was a police escort because it is pretty hard to see in the water. The police also did not want us taking any pictures so this was as close as I could get. There were a few sailors standing up in the sail waving to us. No, Brad was not one of them. He did get to be one of them on a trip back into the harbor during the deployment but I was not there to capture the sight.
Here is a little closer on once the boat had passed. It was such a sight against the sunset. There were a few other wives that were out there with us as we watched them leave. Not as many as I thought there would be but this was a short underway.
We watched them for a long while. The two boats on the side of the submarine are the police escorts. I am not sure how far out they escorted the submarine because we left once we could not see the boat anymore.

We both survived the time apart. Since my sister was in town, it was a little easier because I did not come home to an empty house right away. We had lots of activities planned to keep my mind off of separation. After a few days, my sister left and I still had some activities planned to keep me busy. I also recovered from her visit by just chilling out on the couch. By the time I started to miss Brad, he sent me an email. We were able to communicate via email quite a bit. I had sent some letters that I had prewritten him to help him get through the time, but I did not expect any communication back from him so this was a nice surprise. He also was able to call me one evening while they were surfaced. We only had a few more days left apart when I received another call from him. He was back in port for a few hours if I wanted to come see him. Heck yeah, I hopped in the car and headed down. FYI - this is definately not the norm, so please don't expect that this is the kind of communication I will receive in future outings. I was actually prepared not to hear from him at all for the time he was away. We will see how much communication we get to have on future trips. Anyway, the time flew by and before I knew it he was back in port ready to be picked up. Well, so I thought. Here is the boat at the pier. This is a little better picture where you can see the whole submarine. Okay you can only see the very top part of it, but there are not many people that get to see the whole boat unless it is in the shipyard drydock like Brad's boat is. We actually got to see the USS Columbia in its entirity but unfortunately they would not let me take pictures of it. There is a whole lot of boat that you are not really seeing. You are just seeing the roof top to compare to a multi-story building. I picked Brad up from his first underway and we finally got home around 9pm. I am very happy to have him home for now. He will not be going out again until after the baby comes. The next time will be harder but we will survive and learn to cherish the time we have when Brad is at home.