Nimitz News

Dear NIMITZ Family and Friends,
Hello again everyone from sunny and warm San Diego. We are rounding the final turn now on our Planned Incremental (maintenance) Availability (PIA) and are about to enter the home stretch. We’ve had a superb maintenance period and completed a great deal of modernization and repair on the ship. The end of PIA is now seven weeks away. As we head into the final stages of production, the real challenge for your NIMITZ Sailors will be to reclaim total ownership of ALL equipment and spaces. Our emphasis is shifting from production to testing and training for getting underway, setting our sights on sea trials and a little farther down the road, our Tailored Ship Training Availability (TSTA).

Don’t forget, Friday, July 21, is the command picnic at Admiral Baker Field. Have you Sailor take the time to get off the ship, bring out your families to socialize with your shipmates, participate in some athletic competition, and enjoy the weather. This is a great venue for families and I hope to see as many of you out there as possible. Our Sailors and families are doing great and this MWR picnic is a small way of saying thanks.

Some changes to working hours are on the horizon. As we complete PIA and our requirements for supporting shipyard work decrease, working hours will shift 30 minutes earlier– 0600 to1300 (knock off ship’s work) beginning Monday, Aug. 7. Following Labor Day weekend, Tuesday, 5 September, we will commence “NIMITZ hours” which will be 0600 to 1230 (knock off ship’s work) with lunch being served at 1230. These changes will put us on the same schedule we used during last year’s training cycle. NIMITZ Hours allows us to get our work done, de-conflict with some of the San Diego traffic, and provide a little more time with our families during our inport periods

We have a Friends and Family Cruise scheduled on Saturday, Sept. 16. Each NIMITZ Sailor will be authorized up to four guests to join them underway for the day. Exceptions for more guests will be considered on a case-by-case basis. There will be a nominal fee—probably about $10—for each guest to pay for food, rented equipment. Minimum age is eight years old. We will be putting out much more detail, but mark you calendars now.

Your Sailors have a busy underway schedule coming up and we need to get everyone into that mindset. For many of you this is old news, but we all need to think about taking care of the routine sea duty type of things like ID card and base sticker expiration dates, page two verifications, insurance papers, wills, powers of attorney, etc. As always, we will have a series of pre-deployment briefs after the first of the year to pass out info, but we all need to have our personal and family affairs in order every time we go to sea.

I want to say good-bye and thanks to Tammy Iverson and Heather Correa for their great support as Command Ombudsmen and hello to our New Ombudsmen, Sandy Barker, Sharon Ellis, and Sebrina Peebles. I also want to remind about everyone about our family support group, Team NIMITZ. They are up and running, and still meeting the second Tuesday of each month at Murphy Canyon Chapel. The contact info for both the Ombudsmen and Team NIMITZ is the same and those groups are standing by to lend assistance and support the command.

I want to congratulate our Sailors of the Quarter. They are AS1 (AW/SW) Eleazar Garcia from AIMD; EM2 (SW) Chad Miller from Reactor; and ABEAN (AW) Jerome Riley from Air Department. Bravo Zulu to these outstanding Sailors on their achievement! We are expecting Chief Petty Officer selection results in the next couple of weeks. I expect a strong showing from this great crew

Finally, I want to thank you for your continued support. We’ve had a very successful PIA and now it is time to shift gears back to our operational mission. I know you will continue to support your Sailors and this team and enable us to continue our outstanding performance.

Warm regards and very respectfully,
CAPT Ted Branch, USN
Commanding Officer
USS NIMITZ (CVN 68)