USS Stennis arrives at new homeport
SEATTLE – Armed with a large red and black umbrella, Beth Wiruth stood ashore in Bremerton and anxiously watched Saturday as the USS John C. Stennis slowly made its way to its new homeport at Naval Base Kitsap.
“The ship is in sight!” Wiruth shouted as she scanned the deck where more than 2,500 sailors wearing their winter dress-blue uniforms stood at attention. “Ahh, it’s just the best sight. It’s just the best sight!”
Wiruth was one of more than 300 family and friends who stood at Delta Pier in Bremerton, west of Seattle, to greet the carrier Saturday afternoon as it sailed into Sinclair Inlet from its former base at San Diego.
The Nimitz-class carrier, commanded by Capt. David H. Buss, arrived as part of a regular rotation throughout the fleet. It replaces the USS Carl Vinson, which will go to Virginia for a complete overhaul.
The Stennis and its crew are expected to remain in Bremerton for about 10 years, good news to Wiruth and her husband, Petty Officer 1st Class Scott Wiruth. He’s an electronics technician who works on combat systems.
Wiruth has gone away and then returned so many times in the 18 months they’ve been married that the couple has developed a system for finding each other during these homecomings.
Rain or shine, Beth Wiruth holds the same red and black umbrella open so he can spot her on shore, and she knows to look for him next to the enormous, white “74” painted just below the bridge deck. The number signifies the Stennis is the 74th of 77 carriers built.
“He stands just left of the seven,” Wiruth said during a telephone interview with an Associated Press reporter in Seattle. She laughingly added, “You can’t get more exact than that.”
The Stennis left Wednesday from Naval Air Station North Island at San Diego, where it had been based for the past six years.
It will spend the first 10 months in a drydock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard undergoing long-awaited maintenance and updates, said Chief Petty Officer Jeri Robinson, a Navy spokeswoman.
The nuclear-powered ship will replace the USS Carl Vinson, another aircraft carrier that had been at Bremerton since 1997.
The Vinson and its 3,200 sailors leave Thursday for a six-month deployment in the western Pacific. In November, the carrier will head for Newport News, Va., for a 3 1/2 -year refueling overhaul.
The 1,092-foot Stennis recently participated in the Navy’s new Fleet Response Plan. Exercises this summer had seven of the Navy’s 12 carrier strike groups deployed simultaneously to test the feasibility of having multiple detachments at sea.
In early 2001, the new FA-18E Super Hornet flew test flights from the Stennis, and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., the carrier’s aircraft patrolled the skies over Los Angeles.