Don’t worry. There is not going to be a post about each day of this deployment.
I wrote my first letter home on 27 May 1969. I don’t think I posted it, though, until we arrived in Hawaii two weeks later. It repeated the concerns I had about seasickness and added a little detail.
“Well, just completed my 27th straight hour at sea. It’s not too bad. I haven’t thrown up yet, but I did pass up most of last night’s supper. I hit the rack at 7 p.m., stood a watch from 3 to 7 a.m., hit the rack again from 8:30 to 1130. [Besides CIC watch-standing, I still didn’t really have a job on the ship.] Boy, this motion makes you sleepy. It’s like you’re in a hammock all the time, swinging gently back and forth, back and forth, back and forth gulp. No, today, I’ve felt very well. I ate a big breakfast and a good-sized lunch. Of course, the sea has been quite calm, I understand.”
This image of the beginning of that letter shows one of the examples of Biddle stationery.
In my journal that same day, I noted we had progressed to “N. Florida.”