For those of you following the "Bailout"

If you've been wondering exactly what "The Bailout" is, who it involves, or how it's going, here are few articles that I think are particularly good explanations. Sitting on a boat gives you abundant time to research current events, apparently. -Rolling Stone article describing how we got in this mess in the first place: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print -Financial Times cartoon describing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new framework for economic reform: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/42f10f16-1a16-11de-9f91-0000779fd2ac.html -The Atlantic article explaining where we need to go from here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200905/imf-advice

Thank the Good Lord for the Irish

How was your St. Patrick's day? Mine was good, thanks. Here's a picture my crew took right before we came off shift on St. Patty's (P.S. we wore our green flight suits for the occasion even though the correct uniform right now is our desert, tan colored flight suits). Note the 4th crew chief attached to the cargo door above and to the left of the GAU-17 minigun.

CNN story

Here's a CNN article about our last mission. Despite the fact that we aren't mentioned (so much for my 60 seconds of fame, huh?), we were on station while the Navy sent their boats over to apprehend the suspected pirates. The article gives you a pretty good idea of what we're doing out here. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/21/somalia.pirates/index.html

A happy little town name Phuket

At the end of last month all the little Marines and Sailors on the boat started getting excited. We'd already had two port calls (Hawaii and Guam) and we were gearing up for one more. I'd heard a lot about Phuket, Thailand, and I was excited. According to the ever churning rumor mill Phuket was beautiful, with blue water, a tropical landscape, and fun nightlife. For once the rumor mill was right. I was determined to make the most of my inaugural trip to Thailand so I hopped on the internet, when it worked, and attempted to find some ruins or something cool to go see. After a little searching, I found it! The Anathaya ruins looked awesome; 2000 years old with huge buildings in a surreal setting. I was so excited! Then I found out that it was almost 800 miles away from Phuket! Lame! I decided that the ruins were probably outside of my allowed travelling range for the little bit of liberty we were getting. Just when I had resigned myself to just wandering around Phuket looking for something interesting to do, the Fun Boss (everybody that's in charge of something on the boat is a "Boss", there's the Gun Boss, the Fit Boss, the Air Boss, etc.) sent out an email with a bunch of trips that people could sign up to take. I ended up signing up for two trips; white water rafting, elephant riding, and waterfall swimming on the first day, and deep sea fishing with some of my buddies on the second day. It was a blast. Both trips left at 0600, so that was rough. For the trip the first day we rode in a bus for about an hour, then got out and rode in the back of little trucks for another 30 minutes of cruising down little one lane dirt roads at 40 or 50 miles an hour, dodging elephants and other cars. Once we got to the eco-tourism camp, we split into three groups. I was in the waterfall swimming group so the 10 of us loaded back into one of the trucks and headed 15 minutes up the road to the trailhead. We hiked back into the woods for about 15 minutes to a 35 foot high waterfall. The waterfall had carved itself into the rock bed of the river, so you could climb up the waterfall and play in the fast moving water, which was a blast. We stayed there for about an hour and a half, then climbed back in the trucks and headed back to camp. After drinking a Pepsi at the camp, we all walked down the road a 1/4 mile to the white water rafting start point. Surprisingly enough, we each got a helmet and a life vest, and the whole thing kicked off with a safety brief. After that we all hopped in the rafts and a Mad Max white water romp ensued! Each raft had a Thai boat leader and what we didn't realize at the beginning, but that soon became apparent, was that the white water rafting was actually a white water race! At each bend of the river the rafts would bunch up and the boat leaders would jockey for position, splashing the other boats with their oars, and pushing off of the other boats to get ahead of the pack. It was a blast. Then we came around one corner and there was an elephant in the river! He must have been pretty content because he just stayed there as we went by. The whole adventure lasted about 45 minutes, and by the end I was exhausted from paddling and pushing off and holding on. It was awesome. After rafting we went back to the camp where they cooked us all a full lunch. We had fish, chicken, rice, and a bunch of side dishes. It was a lot more than I was expecting, and it was really good. The next day I got up early again, and my buddy Nic and I went deep sea fishing. Two of our Marines went too, Sgt Clarkson and Cpl Vanderwood. We got on a boat with an older guy who spoke no English and what I assume was his 14 year old son who smoked cigarettes and spoke infinitely more English than his dad, which only seemed to total about 20 words. It was awesome. They took us about 20 miles from the port in between a few little islands and we trolled back and forth from around 0730 until 1030. We caught 17 fish. Beyond a dogfish that I caught in Puget Sound with my dad when I was 10 or so, I don't think I've ever caught a fish before, so it was mission accomplished in my mind. At 1030 the captain of our little fishing vessel pointed us toward this beautiful island a few miles away while his son cleaned a fish for each of us. He took out the guts, cut off the head and the tail, and chucked them in a bucket of oil that was cooking over a propane stove. By the time we dropped anchor in a beautiful blue bay near what looked like a posh resort on the little island, the fish was ready and the man broke out styrofoam trays of fried rice to go with our fish, and strangely enough, what I think were crab cake sandwiches. We all dug in to the fish and rice, washed it down with Cokes, and were very contented. Immediately after eating we all decided to hop in the water and swim to shore to check out the resort. We had all just eaten a gutfull of food, so swimming probably wasn't the greatest idea, but it worked out. The resort was amazing, with modern whitewashed buildings, pools everywhere, and an awesome gym overlooking the bay. We stopped and had a pina colada to celebrate the tropic atmosphere. We wandered around for about 30 minutes checking out the place and during that time Sgt Clarkson found a parrot that he carried around for a while, and we saw a 4 foot lizard in the bushes that I was sure was going to attack us. After we'd had our fill with exploring we hopped back in the water and swam back to our boat. We didn't fish much on the way back, but we sure slept a lot. All four of us basically passed out on the boat, and the hour long nap in the cool ocean air while we cruised back to the port was the perfect end to a great day. All in all the trip to Phuket was amazing, much more than I'd imagined it would be. The only drawback of the whole thing was that every time I did something fun or exciting it made me miss my favorite travel partner, Jen. Maybe we'll get a chance to come back some day... Since we left Phuket we've continued our trek west, and now we're established in the Gulf of Aden, the waterway that separates Yemen and the Middle East on the north from Somalia and Africa on the south, ready to hunt pirates. Over the course of the last two years the pirate business in this area has steadily grown, and now the international community has made fighting piracy here a top priority. Over a dozen countries, including Russia, China, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, have sent ships down here to try to nab some pirates and protect merchant vessels as they transit through the Suez canal on their way to Europe or Asia. My job is basically to fly around looking for pirates. It's not the sexiest job in the world, but it's not too bad either. I'm on the night shift right now, so my days are backwards, but it's nice too because it's quiet at night and I can get some things done. Overall, it's been a good cruise so far, and I'm about 30% done, so that's encouraging too. I hope everyone's doing well, please feel free to shoot me an email at brian.hensarling@boxer.usmc.mil , and if you know somebody who might like to check up on me, please send them this website. See you guys soon!