CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: NAHFOOK

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: NAHFOOK

If you want to see where a lot of our tax dollars go, come to Nahfook. That’s how it’s pronounced, even by news anchors. I’m using a genteel spelling for how people who grew up here actually pronounce Norfolk. Yes, at first I was taken aback by the use of the “f” word in the city moniker. But if “Meet the Fokkers” can be displayed on movie theater signs around the country, it appears that the “f” word doesn’t have the same cachet it used to have (say it all together now) when we were growing up.

The tax dollars are evident in all the state of the art naval ships that are crammed into the Norfolk Harbor. Some are on their way to being de-commissioned and put out to pasture (or do they get a sea burial?). Some are state of the art destroyers just itching to go to the Straits of Hormuz. Others are carriers, with their multiple football field size decks, from which we can send forth planes, manned and unmanned, to cause death from above. Make no mistake; these are not weapons of peace. I understand the need to be prepared – I didn’t earn my Girl Scout Curved Bar for nothing. But do we need to spend more on defense than the next 14 countries behind us – combined? Really?

At our marina in Willoughby Bay, we listen to and watch the newest helicopters take off, land, and do maneuvers in the air, as another generation of helicopter pilots is trained nearby. Will there ever be drone helicopters? Maybe there already are. I learned today at Nauticus, the museum next to the USS Wisconsin on the Norfolk waterfront that our navy was using unmanned planes to drop bombs during the first Iraq War – Desert Storm – in 1991. And I had thought drones were a new thing, designed and deployed long after 9/11.

We passed Kings Bay, a naval submarine base – make that nuclear submarine base – in Georgia, as we were heading up the Intracoastal Waterway. If you have to ask how much a naval nuclear submarine costs, well, you know – rest easy, the place is well guarded. We couldn’t get Slow Motion within a hundred yards of it. And most likely we’re on some security tapes for the day we passed. I can hear the analysts: “Why is that boat going so slow? Are they taking any photos? Let’s run the name. Oh, (light bulb coming on), it’s named “Slow Motion.” Poor schmucks, probably can’t go any faster.” Kings Bay is mentioned in the same Blog with the armada in Norfolk not only because those subs take a big chunk of our tax dollars, but also because it was in the news today. Two people parachuting out of a small plane, “for fun”, landed at the base – they were only a mile away from their intended landing site. They got the full treatment – capture, detention, questioning, then ultimately release. Sometimes we citizens can be such jerks, putting an entire naval division on alert because of a stupid mistake we make. Good thing our taxes cover the cost of dealing with idiots too.

Remember when there was a serious discussion about “Guns vs. Butter”? Remember when Congress had to vote whether to go to war? (That may be too far back to remember.) Remember when the government raised money specifically to cover the costs of war? Remember when “war bonds” were issued and patriotic Americans bought them eagerly to support our troops overseas? How did we allow our Government to wage one war after another, without ever raising any money to pay for any of them? What happened – were we all knocked out with nerve gas? With the “Guns vs. Butter” discussion, we acknowledged that we only had enough money either to wage war or to meet our social needs at home. And that’s still the case. But our Presidents Bush and Shrub decided to spend trillions of dollars waging three wars (two in Iraq, one in Afghanistan), without ever asking us if we wanted to spend our tax dollars that way, AND without ever trying to find money somewhere else to pay for them. That’s not good economics. And those wars alone killed any likelihood of balancing the federal budget in the near future. Those wars, and the Shrub’s trillion dollar prescription drug benefit, which made his pharmaceutical lobbyists very happy, brought us THE ETERNAL DEFICIT.

Okay, okay, I’ll back off. But I’m so sick and tired of hearing how Social Security is bankrupting us – at least we workers paid and paid and paid into that fund for years and years and years. We didn’t pay any money into a “War Fund”. You simply can’t have Guns AND Butter. You just can’t, particularly when you pay nothing for the guns. So it’s time to choose sides – who wants more guns and who wants more butter? And how are we going to pay our trillions in debt for the three unfinanced wars? Furthermore, if we want more guns, more wars, where does that money come from – the Social Security Fund? Lots of young men and women used to oppose foreign wars that our government waged without Congressional authorization (read: Vietnam), but now, with the all volunteer military and without the coercive draft, most young men and women work on getting an education, finding a job and building a personal fortune ( not that there’s anything wrong with that). The volunteers get killed and maimed and scarred for life (externally and internally), but we thank them and then try to ignore their constant complaints about a Veterans Administration that takes years to process their claims. We read articles about their traumatic brain injuries from all the roadside IEDs and how they can’t get any treatment for these injuries, but then we turn back to our workaday lives, grateful that we don’t have to deal with the VA.

Oh, I said I’d back off. If you’re still reading, and have not given up on me as a pinko commie or, God forbid, a European socialist, the Admiral and I are still living on Slow Motion. However, our movement has dropped from slow to imperceptible. We are “stationed” in Norfolk at Willoughby Bay, as the Admiral completes some computer work and we get some repairs done on Slow Motion. Repairs on the boat – now that’s a recurrent theme. We hope that these relatively minor repairs – a new engine blower, a new hose connecting the engines, some bolts on the trim tab under the boat – are preventive in nature and avoid far greater costs. We arrived in Norfolk with some very stormy weather. But the last few days, there has been less than 200% humidity and a breeze – it’s livable weather on the East Coast, our first in a thousand miles.

The Intracoastal Waterway keeps going up to Massachusetts, but Norfolk is at mile marker zero. We start all over with distances, as we head into the Chesapeake. We came from mile marker 1165 or 1065 in Fort Lauderdale – true, two long days in a car – and we have been on the water since June 18. Whooey! Some good things – I can put the fenders down and lift them up during docking and departure procedures. I can throw the lines to the dock person who is helping us tie up. I can restart the engine when it stalls. I can tell what most markers in the water mean. Some room for improvement: I can’t do a clove hitch and tie up the lines on the cleats on the dock. That’s my number one priority in the weeks to come. I haven’t plotted out our route across a bay with the protractor, figuring out the angles where we need to turn to stay on course. That’s a long term project for me. And I haven’t tied and retied the fenders, using the bowline knot, based on whether we need to place them vertically or horizontally. So there’s still a lot of work to be done to get co-captain status. I’m not striving for an admiralty, just competence in navigation and boat handling.

That’s where Trawler U and Trawler Fest in Baltimore at the end of September may be helpful. I missed the classes in Florida in January. But it’s time to go into the classroom, where I used to do pretty well, to hone my skills. Who am I kidding? Will I ever crawl around the engine room of Slow Motion? Probably some day, but it’s not something I look forward to. Will I be making repairs in the engine room, or just checking the level of the water in the batteries? Don’t know, but so far these are chores I have avoided. My hat’s off to the Admiral. He’s been in the engine room many times, and I’m sure he’s a better person for it – and Slow Motion is in better shape because of his knowledge and dedication. While he’s doing that, I’m at West Marine buying a product that claims to remove unpleasant odors from the air. Hmmm, a boat that is safe and runs efficiently or a boat that doesn’t smell so bad – which is more important? As an odor freak, this is a toss-up for me. But most men, including the Admiral, are smell impaired and can tolerate a lot more bad air than women can. Okay, okay, I admit it – I want a boat that is safe and runs efficiently. And I wish that I had the Admiral’s skills – or just half of them – to be a full partner in the safety and repair departments. I know the Admiral likes my smile, but wouldn’t he like a crew member who really knows what she’s doing? My smile can be very winsome. Still, nothing says I can’t keep smiling AND become more proficient in boating. This is my goal, as we venture north from mile marker zero in Nahfook.