My soon to be home

So I have been told I will be living onboard the USNS SGT MATEJ KOCAK ...I'm not sure how to pronounce it either.

I found a few pictures for your enjoyment..

I'll keep you informed when I find out more!!

Coming soon...

Welcome to my new project!

As you can see I'm a US Naval Officer ( a Surface Warfare Officer) who is being stationed in Diego Garcia for 12 months. I'll leave my current home of San Diego, CA in March of 2011 for my new island adventure!

I'll stay with my current ship until November, go on vacation back home for a month (Home for the first Christmas since I've been in the Navy!), and then I'll be in schools in CA until mid March.

This blog got it's name because

     a) there are not many women working on the island

   and

     b) when I tell everyone where I'm going they all ask the same thing, "Where in the heck is that?!"

For those of you who also are not aware of the location of this mysterious island here you go.

Diego Garcia "Camp Justice" 7º20'S 72º25'E

Diego Garcia is a British territory mostly populated by the US military, the British colony that's been colonised by the Americans. Normally the island is home to about 1,700 military personnel and 1,500 civilian contractors. But only about 50 troops are British. The island is used jointly by the Navy and the Air Force. Though the Navy contingent is larger, the Air Force does the flying.

Diego Garcia is a narrow tropical jungle reef in the Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles south of the southern India coast. Despite the tropical feel to the reef, this is no Margaritaville. It's more of a stationary aircraft carrier. Diego Garcia is exclusively a military reservation located on a small host country atoll in the Chagos Archipelago. It has three or four pubs and restaurants, a military shopping center (like a big CVS or a mini WalMart), a small medical center and some recreational facilities (where you can rent scuba gear and bikes and sports equipment) 
Diego Garcia is an unaccompanied tour area; concurrent travel of dependents is not authorized. Military flights are the only authorized flights in and out of Diego Garcia to Singapore. Commercial and military flights are available from Singapore.
This spectacular location east of equatorial Africa -- where a 30-minute bus tour can show you the entire location -- holds elements of an adventure vacationer's dream. There's tropical windsurfing and fishing for 200-pound marlin. While it's no Pebble Beach, playing the 9-hole golf course is free -- and a hoot to do with no shoes on. And the sea is so warm, snorklers can wade in and play tourist with thousands of brilliantly colored tropical fish.

A tropical footprint-shaped island just 7 degrees south of the equator, Diego Garcia is heavily vegetated. The island covers 6,720 acres in area with a maximum height of 22 feet and an average elevation of four feet above sea level. The shoreline is about 40 miles long and the island encloses a lagoon 6.5 miles wide and 13 miles long.




Yeah...crap, what have I gotten myself into?! Haha.

Actually I'm still really excited! I wanted a good new adventure. I've never been happy settling down, I'm an Army brat, so I'm so used to moving every few years it seems normal to me. I went from the University of FL to Bath, Maine (where they were building my ship) then sailed it around the country, through the Panama Canal to San Diego where I've been stationed since 2009. I'm single, and I figured I may as well go on this adventure now, while I don't have anyone tying me to one particular place.

I know a lot of my family wants to know about the job. I'll be the Force Protection Officer for the dozen or so Naval Supply ships that are stationed there. Those ships are used as emergency equipment, usually for natural disasters, like the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004. I'll be in charge of checking each ship and observing their drills to grade them and see if there is anything else they need to do to guarantee the protection of the ship in an emergency or from terrorist threat.

Well I think that's a good introduction for now. I'll update this blog more as my moving date approaches!

Feel free to comment and ask questions!