Not Your Grandma’s Cruise––

A Vacation Cruise With Cramped Accommodations, But Great Security

By Kaaren Valenta

It was not a typical cruise from Hawaii when Frank Amaral of Sandy Hook sailed from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, Calif., two weeks ago.

Mr Amaral, 48, was a guest on the last deployment of America’s Flagship, the USS Constellation (CV 64). The aircraft carrier, affectionately known as “the Connie” to military personnel, was on its way home from the war in Iraq and is scheduled to be retired from service this summer.

“My son-in-law, Kevin McShane, is an MS2 –– a midshipman –– and is the head chef in charge of 15 to 20 guys who work in one of the ship’s galleys,” Mr Amaral said. “They are part of a crew of 5,000 men and women.”

Commissioned in 1961, the ship was on its 21st and final deployment when the war in Iraq began. Instead of returning to its home base, the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, the ship was sent to the Arabian Gulf where aviators flew 1,300 sorties off the ship’s flight deck during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Originally 800 invited guests, called Tigers, were scheduled to be aboard the Connie for a Tiger cruise scheduled in March. When the war intervened, the Tiger cruise was rescheduled for May 24 and fewer than half that many guests boarded the ship at Pearl Harbor.

“I rescheduled my vacation to get on the cruise,” said Mr Amaral, who is a service technician with Fuel Cell Energy in Danbury. “It was a tremendous opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up.”

Mr Amaral flew to Honolulu, where he joined his daughter, Sara, 22, who had flown from her home in San Diego to meet the ship for its day in port on Memorial Day. She could not join the cruise, however.

“The crew can invite parents, sisters, daughters, but not wives or girl friends,” Mr Amaral explained.

During the weeklong cruise from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, the guests learned all about life aboard the ship. Since many of the crew had left the ship in Pearl Harbor, the guests were able to sleep in the crew’s quarters in metal bunks stacked three-high.

“The bunks –– what I call coffins –– are enclosed on the top, bottom, and one side so you can roll out,” Mr Amaral said. “They are just a mattress a few inches thick on top of a steel plate. You lift it up and underneath are about six to eight inches of storage for your clothes. The crewmembers also have lockers about the size of small school lockers for their personal items. And they live like this for six months at a time.”

Sailors on the day shift get up at 6 am and report for duty at 7 am. Their duty does not end until 9 or 10 pm, Mr Amaral said. Since the ship is in operation around the clock, services also must be available.

“The ship has three or four galleys, plus an officers’ galley, that are open on a rotating basis so food is available 23 hours a day,” Mr Amaral said. “When I wasn’t taking the tours or doing the other activities available for the guests, I joined my son-in-law in the kitchen and stood talking to him while he worked. There were only about 100 chairs on board for the guests to use, and there were more than 300 of us. So whenever we watched a movie, a lot of people had to stand.”

The guests ate very well aboard the ship as each meal included a choice of fish, often salmon, beef, chicken, pork, vegetarian dishes, and a salad bar. Between meals, burgers, sandwiches, and other fast food were available.

“Food is very important when you are out at sea for six months or longer,” Mr Amaral explained. “If the same food was served all of the time, people would get bored and unhappy.”

While the ship was on its extended cruise, 100 babies were born at home. But Mr Amaral said the crew was in remarkably good spirits because phones and emailed photos kept them in almost constant touch with their loved ones.

“Morale was great for guys who were out there seven months,” he said. “They didn’t have to rely on the mail, which can take weeks to arrive on the ship.”

The cruise was also the final deployment for a squadron of F14 Tomcats, fighter planes that were built during the Cold War. “The pilots will learn to fly the Hornets, which are half the size of the Tomcats,” he said.

There were 74 jets aboard the ship and nearly a dozen helicopters, nearly all stored in a hanger bay and lifted two at a time to the flight deck when it was time to take off.

“When we arrived in port [in San Diego] it wasn’t with the planes,” Mr Amaral said. “Four squadrons left the ship on Thursday to fly back to their base and the two remaining squadrons left on Friday.”

As America’s Flagship, the USS Constellation carries the Presidential flag and all of the flags of all the fleets. It is 1,079 feet long, 266 feet wide, and 14 stories from keel to mast. It can travel at a speed of more than 30 knots, slightly less than 40 mph.

“I has eight boilers, four engines, and four propellers that are 22-feet in diameter,” Mr Amaral said. “Just imagine how large they are!”

The ship also has a desalinization plant to remove salt from seawater to create fresh water for bathing, washing the decks, and all of the other daily needs for the crew and their guests.

One of the difficult parts of the trip for the guests was getting around the huge ship, a daunting task that deterred many people, including Mr Amaral’s wife Brenda, from taking advantage of the opportunity.

“We had to climb steel ladders between the decks,” Mr Amaral said. “They are very steep and narrow. I am in good shape, but it wasn’t easy. You had to watch your head and feet climbing through doorways and hatches. The average age of the sailors on the ship is about 20 and it’s easy for them. They do an incredible job moving and servicing the planes and keeping the ship running.”

Each of the planes, loaded with bombs, is weighed before takeoff so the catapult can be adjusted for each one.

“Some of the planes weigh 30,000 to 40,000 pounds and they have to be catapulted from zero to 150 miles per hour in a little over a second,” Mr Amaral explained. “On the landing, there are four retrieval catch wires, in a row two inches off the deck. There is a hook on the back of the jet. The hook hits the deck and catches the wire. The object is to hook the second or third wire, not the first –– which is close to the back of the boat –– or the fourth, because it is the last one. The plane has to come in at 150 mph so that it can take off again if it misses the wires. It’s just amazing.”

The guests saw videos of the ship’s war action in which its planes dropped almost a million pounds of bombs. Although it was protected with 50-mm guns and ground-to-air missiles, the Connie also was accompanied by destroyers, frigates, and submarines. Occasionally a supply ship would join the fleet.

“The Connie burns 4,000 gallons of fuel an hour,” Mr Amaral said. “It is one of the last diesel-powered ships and will be replaced by the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76), the newest nimitz-class nuclear carrier. The Ronald Reagan is being built in Newport News, Va., and will be commissioned next month and eventually will be based in San Diego.”

It would have been the final voyage for Kevin McShane, 22, who joined the Navy after high school in Bethel and married Sara Amaral, who grew up in Newtown, last year. But midshipman McShane has decided to re-up for another five years and will be transferred to Rhode Island.

“He put his resigning bonus toward a new car –– a E320 Mercedes sports coupe –– and my daughter had it waiting, with a huge bow on the roof, when the ship docked in San Diego,” Mr Amaral said. “The ship was met by thousands of people, and the news media although we only got ten seconds of it here [in Connecticut] on Channel 5 at noon.”

Besides being the last trip for the ship and the F14s, it was also the last voyage for the commanding officer, Captain John W. Miller, so it was an especially significant journey, Mr Amaral said.

“It was the thrill of a lifetime,” Mr Amaral said. “I call it a million-dollar vacation.”