Do you remember where you were during Hurricane Hortense in 1996? Probably not, since that storm never made landfall in the continental U.S. I, however, was not in the continental U.S. in September of 1996 and I remember that bitch well.

I was in the Navy and serving a shore duty tour at the Fleet Technical Support Center in Mayport, FL. As a radar technician it was my job to go to ships that had broken gear and help fix them. One day my Chief informed me that the USS Thomas S. Gates had a problem and I needed to go fix it. The ship was currently anchored off the coast of Martinique in the Caribbean Sea. A trip to the sunny Caribbean? That’s an order I would gladly follow. After looking over the details of the problem I determined that I might need a special tool kit that was only kept at our parent command in Norfolk, VA. After talking to the team there, one of my civilian counterparts, a guy named Tom, decided he would fly down and meet me at the ship with the tool kit. This was an urgent casualty repair request so we needed to leave as soon as possible. I was fast tracked through our travel system and got a flight for the next day. Tom had a personal commitment that he could not get out of and would be flying down the day after I got there.

For military members, the travel department at our command made all the arrangements. We had no say so in flight times, hotels, or rental car reservations. We could make requests and they were sometime honored when planning out long term travel but for emergent travel such as this, we got what they gave us. When the lady in the travel department handed me my itinerary I saw that I was on an early flight out of Jacksonville the next morning with a change of planes in Orlando and Puerto Rico before going on to Martinique. One unusual thing I noticed was an airline change on the stop in Orlando. When I asked the travel lady about this she said it was the only thing they could do to get me out of here on time. Okie Dokie Artichokie I thought and went on my way. Let me take some time here to give you some travel advice. AVOID at all cost if you can, booking different airlines on the same trip. You’ll see why later.

At Oh Dark Thirty the next morning my girlfriend (who wasn’t thrilled with this last minute trip) dropped me off at the airport and I kissed her goodbye as I boarded the plane to Orlando. I was in high spirits with getting to go to a tropical island and all. Sure, it was a work trip, but us per diem whores (as frequent government travelers are know by) knew how to mix business with pleasure. I made the airline change in Orlando without too many problems other than having to go to a different terminal and go through security again, and then I was off to Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico I made my way over to the departure gate for Martinique and sat down waiting for them to call the flight. Shortly before we were to board, the gate agent made an announcement. She said due to weather concerns this would be the last flight going to Martinique for the day and they weren’t sure they would be able to land and might have to come back.

What was going on here? What weather situation? I knew I was in the Caribbean during hurricane season but I hadn’t seen anything on TV. They never actually said hurricane, just weather concern. This was back before I could just whip out my phone and check things out, and there were no TV monitors in the terminal other than the ones with the flight information on them. Surely the Navy wouldn’t send me into the heart of a hurricane without even mentioning it would they? Surely not.

We boarded the plane. When I say boarded I mean we walked down some stairs on to the tarmac and over to this little prop plane. There were two seats on both side of an aisle and had about a twenty passenger capacity. Most of the passengers were dressed in what I could only assume was vacation attire. I guess they were off to have some fun in the sun. Thankfully my command didn’t require me to travel in uniform so I was just dressed in jeans and a golf shirt. All my uniforms were in my suitcase and I’d have to wear one in the morning before I reported to the ship. Shortly after boarding, we took off and were on the way to Martinique. It was only about an hour hop from Port Rico. About 30 minutes in to the flight I noticed the skies turning very dark from the view out the window. The plane started to encounter turbulence and we were getting buffeted around pretty good. We continued this way for about another 30 minutes before the pilot came on the speaker and told us that the weather was too bad to land. Damn it! This was not good. He then said instead of turning back to Puerto Rico they were going to land on St. Lucia, an island to the south that was not getting much of the bad weather. There we would wait on the runway for an expected clearing over Martinique and we would try it again. OK, so at least we had a chance of getting there.

We landed at the St. Lucia airport and taxied to a side runway. There we waited, and waited, and waited some more. While we were waiting in the cramped airplane I learned of Hurricane Hortense for the first time from the flight attendant. A mother fucking Cat 4 hurricane! The eye was forecast to pass over the island of Guadeloupe, two islands to the north of Martinique, but still going to give it a pretty good wallop. Fuck you Navy! We ended up sitting for over an hour and when the pilots had to turn off the engines to conserve fuel, we lost the air conditioners. They opened the door to the plane to try and compensate for it but if you’ve ever been to a tropical island in September you know all that did was let in hot humid air. Why wouldn’t they just let us go into the airport to wait it out you ask? Well, this flight was never supposed to land in St. Lucia so customs would not clear us go to get into the airport.

Another drawback to no engines is that the one broom closet of a bathroom on the plane was no longer working. As the waiting time stretched to two hours you can imagine people were itching to return their rented drinks, especially the free booze that the airline gave us for going through this. Finally, when we were all about to evacuate our bladders and bowels in one of the empty seats, they decided to literally evacuate us. The pilot (who probably had to go pretty bad himself) announced that he would be firing up the engines and taxing over to a small isolated building where St. Lucia Customs had agreed to let us occupy while waiting. The best part is it had bathrooms. When we got to the building we were escorted (by armed guards mind you) inside and queued up for the bathrooms. Once done with that relieving activity we stood around the interior of the building that was only slightly bigger than the airplane. However, unlike the airplane it had a working air conditioner and the guards did not have to worry about any of us making a break for it to live an undocumented life on the lam on the island of St. Lucia. We were happy to just be milling around like cattle in this climate controlled pen.

After another hour we were herded back on the plane where the pilot informed us he would be making another try at landing on Martinique. A short time later we were back in the soup and trying to land. We made two attempts to land and the pilot waved off each time. He got back on the speaker and informed us he would try one more time but if he wasn’t able to land we would have to turn back to Puerto Rico. As we started the descent on the third landing attempt I thought just land the damn plane! This time we got lower in elevation than on previous attempts and the plane started pitching and yawing all over the place! We got lower and lower and it got worse and worse. My thought changed to turn around, turn around! The pilot was having none of it though. He had decided he was landing this bitch come hell or high water (both were yet to come) and slammed the plane down hard on the runway. As we came to a stop and then taxied into the terminal we were still being buffeted by high winds that threatened to push us off the runway. We finally came to a stop outside the terminal and all of us collectively sighed.

Oh, the fun and games had only just begun for Petty Officer First Class Lovelace. We had to make a mad dash from the plane’s extended door ladder to the terminal. The wind and rain was howling. Thunder boomed and lighting lit up the sky. Once we got inside we had to clear customs which actually ended up being a quick process because our group seemed to be the only ones in the airport. Once I was cleared I went to pick up my suitcase from the baggage carousel. I waited with all the other passengers. One by one they disappeared after collecting their bags and moving on to their ultimate destinations until there was only one left; me. The carousel ground to a halt and there I stood with my hat in my hand. No, that wasn’t true because my uniform hat was in my suitcase along with all my other uniforms! I found a little office near the baggage carousel and went in to inquire about my missing bag. There was one dude behind a counter and I went up to him and started to explain the situation. He looked at me strangely and held up his hand. This is when I learned my first fun fact about Martinique that my travel office had failed to mention. You know who owns the island of Martinique? France. Know what they speak in France? French. Know what they speak in Martinique? You guessed it, French. You know who doesn’t speak French? That would be one very tired and increasingly frustrated petty officer from the US Navy. I know I was in their country and shouldn’t be complaining but try explaining that to a dude who had just flown through a hurricane to get to this island. The guy behind the counter called someone on the phone and soon a lady showed up that could speak a little English. Between the three of us,a lot of hand gestures, and one interpretive dance I performed, we all got on the same page. After some clickity clack clack the guy did on the computer (why does it always sound loud and angry on an airport computer keyboard?) the guy found out that my luggage had not made the transfer of airlines in Orlando. Remember the travel advice I gave about this? Consider yourself so advised.

After getting assurances from Frenchie that my luggage would be delivered to my hotel as soon as it arrived I headed to the rental car counter. Thankfully there was a person there that spoke pretty good English and in no time at all I was being handed the keys to my car. As I walked windsurfed up to my car in the rental parking lot I saw it was some type of little economy car and I didn’t even recognize the make and model. When I managed to get the door open in the competing wind and slipped inside, I noticed something unusual. There was this extra little pedal on the floorboard. That extra little pedal was a clutch. This car was a stick shift. I had never gotten a stick shift at a rental car place before. I knew how to drive a stick shift. My dad made me learn to drive on a stick shift in a pasture in East Texas. Interestingly enough there was only one little tree in that pasture and I managed to hit it. Normally I would say that’s another story but that’s pretty much it. At least there was no one around to see it. Anyway, back to this rental car. Even though I knew how to drive a stick, it had been quite a while since I owned one. I was thinking that brushing up on that skill during a hurricane on a foreign island might not be the optimal time in which to do so.

After consulting the paper map (no GPS) that I had gotten at the rental counter I jerked and stalled my way out into the tempest. The hotel they booked me at was, of course, all the way across the island from the airport. As the wind turned my car more into a hovercraft than a wheeled vehicle, my stick shift piloting skills got more smooth and I was cruising along. The route ended up taking me over some mountain roads. I can imagine they were sketchy enough in the daytime with good weather. At 10:30 at night during a maelstrom, they were barely recognizable as roads. I came around a bend in the road to a most wondrous sight. Flowing down the hillside and right over the road was a river of torrential water! I braked hard but not in time. I plunged right into this river and my hovercraft car turned into a boat. That boat was not all that sea worthy and it wasn’t responding to my frantic turning of the helm otherwise known as the steering wheel. The water pushed my car off the road and perilously close to the drop off on the other side. The only thing that saved me was the fact that I had hit the water with pretty good momentum built up and I was mostly through the river of water when the car came to rest on the side of the road. I was able to nurse the car back onto the road. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to get scared. I put it out of my mind and continued on.

Eventually I found the hotel and while it seemed a little old it actually had a lot of charm and probably would have looked quite nice had the background behind it not been filled with ominous clouds and lightning. I entered the lobby and checked in. The lobby had a big bar and had I not been totally exhausted and probably still recovering from the shock of an almost impromptu safari trip down the side of a mountain, I would have stopped by for a drink. Actually, it would have done me no good. All I had on me was US currency. They only accepted French Francs. Here is travel advice tip #2 for you. If you are going to a foreign country and need their currency, get it at the airport of departure. I had planned on changing money when I got to Martinique, but due to all the delays, by the time I got there the money exchange place was closed.

Milling around the bar I saw several guys that looked American. Furthermore they looked like sailors. They weren’t in uniform but there is just a manner that we sailors have that allow us to easily identify each other in the wild. I approached a group and asked them if they were from the USS Gates. They were and they told me that the ship was anchored out in the bay. I was surprised by this as I kind of expected the ship would have gotten underway during the hurricane. That is usually what happens. The sailors told me that they had secured the liberty boats from the fleet landing because the seas were too rough and that 75% of the crew had been caught on the island. They didn’t have enough personnel to man the ship to get it underway. I got the location of the fleet landing from them, wondering if I was going to be able to get on the ship at all tomorrow.

I was ready for bed so I boarded the elevator to head to my room. This elevator looked like it was made in 1929 and I kept looking for the operator. No operator, there were actual buttons. Big black buttons like you see on an old analog car radio. I pushed the button for my floor and the ancient conveyance started to slowly rise with eerie noises that didn’t lend much to my confidence that I would be getting to my destination. Halfway between the first and second floor all the lights in the elevator went out! The elevator came to a stop and there I was in darkness. What was I going to do?

You know what? This post is getting really long (that’s what she said) so I am going to break it up in two parts. Stay tuned to find out how our intrepid sailor manages to get himself out of this latest scrape. Hint… it’s not that dramatic.

Share this shit y'all!