BREMERTON – The thousands of sailors who run the USS Abraham Lincoln are eager to leave a shipyard dock and get back to sea, the skipper of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier said.
After all, going to sea is what sailors do.
They will have the chance to do just that in just a few weeks when the Lincoln finishes maintenance and leaves Bremerton for sea trials with some new systems onboard and a fresh coat of Navy-gray paint.
After about a week at sea, the giant warship will return to its homeport in Everett, which it left about nine months ago for a dry-dock stint and being tied up to a pier in Bremerton.
That homecoming also is something “the crew is looking forward to,” said Capt. Andrew McCawley.
“We’re not done yet (with refurbishment work), but we will be in the next few weeks,” he said. “Everett is the best homeport in the Navy. We like Bremerton, but Naval Station Everett is the best.”
The Navy hoped that the ship would have been back in Everett by March or early April, but repairs slightly longer than expected.
Since September, about 1,500 crew members who have families in Snohomish County have made the nearly two-hour, one-way commute to Bremerton via bus and state ferry or specially hired passenger ferries that brings sailors directly to and from Naval Station Everett.
Hundreds of others have lived in barracks on a barge near the ship.
“I think the young men universally say they are ready to move into an operational stage,” McCawley said last week in an interview.
The ship has been painted from the waterline on up. The Lincoln has a new satellite communications antenna, an added self-defense missile system, an incinerator to dispose of trash at sea, new nonskid material applied to the 4.5-acre flight deck and some upgraded electronic systems.
While the ship was in dry-dock, the insides of holding tanks were coated to prevent corrosion.
Crews from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard did about half the work, and other contractors and the ship’s own crew did the rest of the work, McCawley said.
For example, the ship’s deck crew used 110 five-gallon containers of paint to give the Abe a fresh look. Rollers and brushes were used to paint 270,000 square feet of surfaces.
When the ship leaves Bremerton, it will start training with aircrews to get ready for the next deployment, likely be in the western Pacific. It’s expected that the ship will deploy again within the year.
McCawley won’t be onboard for the next deployment. His replacement, Capt. Patrick Hall, is expected to take over command in two months or so. McCawley, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1980, said he will retire.Although a lot of the training won’t start until the ship gets under way, some has already begun.
Last week, a panel of naval inspectors visited the ship to witness a number of crew exercises. Additional exercises will be conducted while the ship is readied for deployment.
“Abraham Lincoln passed with flying colors, so we’re ready to move on to our next training evolution,” McCawley said. It’s all geared to “get us to function as a team.”
Teamwork is no more an example than with the people wearing different colored shirts who work on the flight deck during flight operations. Each has a job to do in order to get warplanes safely launched and landed.
All that is coordinated with workers below deck, such as those who bring ordnance to the warplanes or move the airplanes to one of four plane elevators from the hangar bays under the flight deck.
The Lincoln’s time in the shipyard for maintenance might be inconvenient, but it’s necessary, McCawley said.
The work is all part of a planned program to keep the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in use for 50 years.
The ship, commissioned in 1989, goes into the shipyard every 21/2 years or so, McCawley said, to keep things shipshape as well as add new items.
“It’s a critical part of maintaining the ship throughout its life span,” McCawley said
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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