Guam

 After we departed Chuuk, we sailed to Guam for resupply, some port liberty, and to switch ships. While the USS Pearl Harbor served us well from June to the beginning of September, she had other things on her schedule for this fall, so we switched to the USS John L Canley, an Expeditionary Sea Base vessel (ESB-6) for the rest of the mission. While on Guam we celebrated a few of our officers promoting to the next rank, a birthday, and of course went scuba diving. Just off the coast of Guam is the start of the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on the planet bottoming out at 35,876 feet below sea level. We did not go anywhere near that deep, but it was fun looking over the edge of the reef wall into the blue abyss below as we explored the reef and the sea life living there. A fellow nurse and I also dove a wrecked Japanese sea plane that sits upside down just off the coast in about 100 feet of water. We also enjoyed eating at local restaurants that conform to U.S. food safety standards, which could not be said about those in Chuuk or Papua New Guinea.

There was some actual work done in Guam, especially surrounding moving all mission equipment and personnel from the Pearl Harbor to the John L Canley, however most of that work occurred after I left Guam. After just 3 days on Guam, I flew ahead to Palau as part of the ADVON, or Advanced Echelon team, that worked to plan and confirm events ahead of the ship’s arrival at each country stop.