U.S. COAST GUARD SQUADRON ONE, VIETNAM: TEACHING YOUR "DROID" TO SWIM - - - HST'S and more

Well, when you work on the water and have a cell phone - - - ultimately - the WATER shall prevail - - Remember a few short posts back when I was learning how to answer my new "smart phone" - well I learned they are not so "smart" after all - - - they can't swim - - that's right - last Saturday night, my "smart phone" failed the "float test" miserably and plummeted 34 ft to bottom of the "murky depths". The first "phone" I have sent to Davy Jones's Locker in 10 years - - lots of other stuff, but not a phone - -. I figure "this is great", first I can't answer the thing and now it drowns on me - - - -. At 10:30 p.m., we call Tim McNitt, our trusty diver from ATLANTIS DIVE, I show him where the phone took its last gasp and in he went - bounced right back up with phone in hand! - The bloody thing was still lit up - - that's why he found it so fast!! He said he had never brought up a phone that was still on before! - - we grab the phone, pull the battery and the "sim" card and put it in a spare phone that Captain Jones had so our number was still up and running. I figure the phone is "TOAST", but just for grins, I get it home, blow it out with canned computer air and put it in a large "Zip-Lock" bag of Minute Rice - 12 hours later, I tried the phone to see if it would come up - - to my surprise, it lit up and acted like it wanted to run, but it kept kicking off - - I put it back in the bag of rice, pretty much figured it was a goner, - but - what the heck. Twenty-four hours later, I open the bag, blow the phone off, power it up and WALLLAH - - - it comes up with all systems go and has been working like a charm!!! - - Maybe it really is a SMART PHONE - - :)

It hasn't just been all FUN & GAMES for us here, the past several weeks - - we had a record month for boat calls in July and August seems to headed for a record as well - - we have also had near record HEAT AND HUMIDITY the past several weeks as well - - making for some pretty miserable runs - -.