Kirsten Aboard the Comfort #12: UNREP

At 9:00 am this morning we met up with the cargo ship USNS Robert E. Peary (T-AKE-5). They pulled along us for Underway Replenishment. It took about an hour to get it set up and it will take about 4 hours for the transfer. We will take on about 200,000 gallons of fuel and several pallets of supplies. I signed up to volunteer this morning. We met at 8:30 am and were given a briefing of what would happen.

Initially a gun is shot to the cargo ship that has a line attached to it from the USNS Comfort. Once that was secure, a group of us started pulling over a rope that had the fuel line attached. I think there were maybe 40 of us taking turns pulling. It felt like we were pulling the two boats together! The first six people in line took most of the load, the rest of us behind helped as well. At times we had to loosen up and allow some slack in the line. It took us at least twenty minutes because there was a kink in the line somewhere. We finally got it secured and then we had the chance for some photo opportunities.

At one point I did have a chance to be first on the rope, but it wasn't the original rope pulling the fuel line. It was actually quite hard! I also had to start it going around a corner because of the way the layout was.

It is absolutely amazing to me that these two ships will be side by side for 5 hours, transferring fuel and supplies. We are very close to one another and we have to maintain the exact same speed and heading. I am in total awe that we are able to do this. This ship came out here just for us!