Hi All:
Last week I had the honor and pleasure to be invited on board the
USS Bataan (LDH-5), an amphibious assault ship, for a one-day Tiger cruise off the Virginia Capes. A good friend of mine, CMDR Joe Mones, is the IT and Weapons Officer on the ship.
I picked up his wife and kids in Norfolk (along with a few other friends) and drove down to the Norfolk Naval Base where we boarded LCUs and headed out to the ship anchored off shore. Bataan is also a floating dock, meaning that landing craft can pull inside and dock, which is exactly what we did.
Bataan had been underway for just over 30 days, visiting Florida and the Caribbean as part of the "certification" process it needs to complete prior to a major deployment. The ship will be heading out this winter for 7 months at sea (God bless them...).
We had a BLAST on the ship all day, ate great food and basically had the run of everything. I took lots of pictures and videos and posted the best ones to an album in Photobucket. Click
here to view. Be sure to check some of the videos, they're pretty COOL...
BTW, I looked but could NOT find a hot tub anywhere on that ship. One would go great just below the main mast, good view too...
Drewski