Here is Petty Officer Chris Harris, AK2 our tour guide, he is probably the best tour guide that we have every had, and not a bad recruiter either!  It was a lot of fun seeing the Base with him.

Here's Jodi discussing the finer points of disaster control with Shawn....

....however, DC1 Jones, made sure that we understood that it wasn't how pretty the job was done, but how well it's done, she was a lot of fun too, and she didn't soak people in the USS Buttercup as much as we thought she would.  Her tour of the disaster simulator was really fun and informative.

At the Air Tower, Petty Officer Lantham showed us the upper control area, the operations center and the main radar control room for the base.

It wasn't bad enough that we were trying to drive a bus around the flight line of an active air base, but then we had to watch out for people like this who just couldn't watch out for themselves, don't worry, the bus only sustained minor injuries ;)

After the Base we headed over to the American Rover for a nice two hour tour.....

Andy and Josh were drafted into the crew to help hoist the sails...

But the real crew did the really interesting work...

During the trip was got to see the USS Wisconsin that was berthed at the Nautica Naval Museum.

Somehow, during our tour, without the knowledge of the Coast Guard, Captain Heather took the wheel.....
be afraid, be VERY AFRAID!

But then the real captain showed us how it was really done!

We didn't get to see any of the submarine races, but we did get to see the tug boat races!

When the order came to drop the sails, Lewis really dropped them!

I understand that there is someone out there who doesn't believe that  Shawn likes crab legs....  Well, he does, I think that was his third plate full.  Everybody came away totally stuffed from dinner at the Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant!

There's also someone I'm told who doesn't like tunnels, well, here's one for the books, this tunnel goes under the James River, the approach is on a long bridge which then goes into the tunnel.  What's interesting about this tunnel is that whenever a Naval Vessel of any size (like an aircraft carrier) has to go to sea fully loaded during low tide, it is deeper in the water, leaving only 4-5 feet of clearance between the keel of the ship and the bottom of the river, as a precaution, the tunnel is closed to traffic anytime this happens, oh what fun!

More Tomorrow, stay tuned, same band time, same band channel!