Had one like the opener...van...driving to beat all...passes me. Bye! Mile or two down the road the van is on side of the road...people...and kids...standing around the van...local property owner (I assume) standing there...one of the kids rubbing the top of his head. I'd say they were lucky, the van was upright...no blood...and I don't know exactly what happened but I hope she slowed down, for all concerned. The evidence in the ditch suggested she'd rolled...or bounced in and out?
This other time, we're in the yard at Hunter's Point, ready to haul arse and leave after a nineteen month...whoa...never thought about that before. But it was 19 months...an unusually long time...overhaul. The navy had closed Hunter's Point in '74 and the power-that-be decided it was prudent to deliver work to the San Francisco area...this was the time of Harvey Milk? Diane at city hall? Dirty Harry...where they filmed one scene outside the gate, worker lodgings. Anyway, we're lit up, boilers lit, we'd done a few sea trials, we're gonna head down to San Diego.
For whatever reason, they'd decided to move the Cook from the quay wall in front of us over across the way...we were further in. Go figure. Tug moves the Cook over, they release the lines, and the tug starts backing up to us...and doesn't stop. We don't know this...this is what we heard after...all we knew was the ship moved noticeably and then the voice over the 1MC, Flooding! Flooding! Flooding in the boiler room! Away the in-port damage control team...or maybe it was the underway damage control team. We're sitting in Combat...some are cheering...means more safe shore duty. They shifted ballast, made the Hepburn tilt toward the pier...fixed us without moving us into dry-dock. We left a week or two later...and all the while sailors from the Cook, over across the way took time out to moon us from the boat deck...we were both Knox-class fast frigates.
Fast forward months...six maybe. Underway...out of San Diego...I'm sitting in Combat monitoring a radio net...usually boring work but some traffic comes over the net, I stop day-dreaming and begin to copy down the message. Sierra Papa this is Whiskey Tango at time...blah blah blah. What happened is the Cook, on maneuvers with the Mars, smack-rammed into the side of the Mars and tweaked her nose...no one hurt...ship damaged, the equivalent of a fender-bender. Fog.
Have had a few others that I remember.