STEERING and UNREP's
On USNS Kawishiwi T-AO-146

I think the Abraham Lincoln refueled and took on Ammo at the same time with another ship in our area. I am getting the Ammo Ships names mixed up or I would tell you which one it was. I wish someone would have taken a good picture of the Unrep we did with the Ammo ship. Here they were refueling a ship, taking on fuel from us. Off loading some ammo with Helicopters meanwhile we had another ship on the other side of us. It was 4 ships all in a row and very scary. I hoped everyone's steering did not have any glitches and that there were 4 pairs of steady hands at the wheel.

My dad was talking about the Hydraulic steering on the Kawishiwi. I think they replaced the Hydraulics all the way to the aft steering with an electrical system with a special Hydraulic interface. It still rarely had problems. There was a secondary control in the aft. They always Manned the aft steering during the Unwrap's. They Installed a regular phone line besides a the regular sound powered line down there and also had radio phones with them so there would not be any possible communication breakdowns during the unrep. You still have problems when the ships start drifting the span wire starts singing, the aft steering is trying to react to the loss and then the receiving ship dumps the hoses. It is hard to turn away from a ship when there are hoses in the water.

We also had a time when I actually heard the collision alarm. We were not in an unrep but doing slow circles at the time at our waiting area. The steering acted up and we were doing circles short quick scary circles. They switched to Manual for a half hour which requires like a very muscular 6 man crew. We learned all this during our ESWS training.

We had some ships that were so far away that it was hard for the ship to get the hoses connected. They had a training that reminds me a lot like the Air craft Touch-N-Goes. We call them Leap Frogs. It is a sort of Steering exercise where the ship pulls up like an unrep pulls away. They do this several times. They do not use the Romeo flag during these steering exercises. We had one FF that the Ships Master yelled at. He said we could throw our lines to you but we will shoot the lines over like we are suppose too. Please give us a little room. That is why they had all this modern equipment so the ships did not have to sail so dangerously close. We did not have to throw the lines over any more. They have modified shot guns with rubber shots on them with thin orange strong nylon cord attached.

We had an unrep with a carrier in which a big rogue wave washed in between the ships and up to the Carriers refueling station. I was on the Bridge to Bridge phone.  The wave washed the Signal person with the paddles right over the edge. He was hanging on to the lines by one hand on the outside of the ship. He was trying to pull himself up when the guys rushed up to help him. I guess they were afraid another one was going to hit. He was very lucky.

Sincerely, Lia Burris