"There are personnel working aloft!"

Well, today I got to go "Aloft" for the first time ever... now, I have a problem with heights, so this was a big deal! Not only do I not like to be up high, but when I am up high I tend to get dizzy/spacey and sometimes feel a little queasy... but as we are preparing to enter the yards for major overhaul on the ship, we are required to take down our antennas so they can be overhauled also... so, up I went! My assigned area: "The Stick"... it's the absolute highest point on the ship, that is actually also the narrowest point on the ship up at the very top where when the wind blows, "The Stick" shakes and sways... before you go up you strap on a safety harness around your body, much like the one used by window-washers on the big high-rise glass office buildings... then you walk up 5 stories of stairs, then you get on this HUUUUUUGE ladder and you climb up ANOTHER 5 stories... then you are the bottom of "The Stick"... it is just a narrow beam that goes up another roughly 15 feet and there are these little ladder-like rungs welded to the side of it that you use to climb up it... there is a pole welded in between the rungs to which you attach your safety harness... once you are at the point where you want to work, you verify that your safety harness is "locked in" on the metal pole, you reach out and strap your safety line to a metal tie-point on "The Stick" just in case your safety harness slips from the metal pole, then you lean back and "sit" in your harness so that you can use both hands to do the actual work... at roughly 11 stories above the ground!!!

Anyways, I was up there all day yesterday, most of the day today, and I'll be there all day tomorrow until we are done... I did much better than I thought that I would... but I quickly learned to not look down or up any more than I had to, just look straight at the bolt I was trying to remove and focus on the work at hand!

I have included pictures!



This is where "The Stick" is located on the ship... that small "post" inside the red circle...






Here is a view of the aft-end of the ship from "the basket", which is the very bottom of "The Stick"... it gives you a good idea of how high up it is up there...















Here is the view of the pier and the parking lot from the basket...











This is the focsle of the ship... the red arrow is pointing at one of the antennas that we have removed and it is being hoisted off of the ship by a crane...












Here's me at the top of "The Stick"... uuuhhhh... "fun stuff", yeah...

:)