I debated whether I ought to make this entry or not. As you can see, the debate took a while to resolve itself. I attended the christening and had mixed emotion. On the one hand, the Navy did an excellent job with crowd control, but there wasn't much advertising about the potential to buy goodies at the pier. Bring cash :-)
The boat was commissioned at Groton, at the Submarine Base. The ceremony itself was pretty quick. Hawaii Gov Lingle said a little bit, Hawaii Senator Inouye said a little, the EB guys said a lot more... Master Sergeant Ganotise (ret) gave a blessing in Hawaiian. The highlight of the ceremony was when Gov Lingle told the crew (who were assembled on the pier) to 'man our ship and bring her to life!' The men marched over the brow and 'lined the rails.' At the same time, the optics masts lifted out of the sail, the horn blew and the crowd clapped wildly.
OK, so maybe that tied with the moment the commissioning pennant broke out on the aft of the sail. Both brought genuine tears to my eyes. I waved my flag wildly enough that I pulled some staples out. I was the only one with an American flag. At the commissioning of a US Navy Submarine. Buy flags and hand them out to those around you.
There were hula dancers; young ladies who were so graceful they looked as though they were fluid, not solid at all. Very lovely to watch. Afterwards, a reception at Morton Hall. We had salad, watched more native dancers and took in the scenery. I was privileged to take a photo of Chris and Capt Solms, as well as one with COB Bentley.
After that, we got permission to tour the boat. I went below and was able to see all three decks forward! I'm not going to talk much about what I saw, but the torpedo room was extremely interesting both because of its size and configuration.
I got to see Chris' rack, which isn't very big, but it was an honour to see where he works and lives. I only hope I'll be able to take a tiger cruise before she goes to Pearl Harbor!
