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Clearly, the port authority was not pleased with this development but complied, and around 0720, a small boat with two tugs behind it came chugging down the channel toward us, bringing out the pilot. It was already becoming clear that we would be entering the harbor and mooring later than scheduled. While not of great concern, it was another factor that raised the tension level. Being in port under Threat Condition Bravo, the less time the ship spent refueling alongside the pier, the less vulnerable we were to any security threats.

The pilot boat maneuvered alongside back by the flight deck, and at 0746 the pilot, Mr. Ibrahim, boarded USS
Cole
and was escorted to the bridge. He was a slightly built man with a gaunt face tanned by years in the sun. The heat of the day had already caused his clean but slightly wrinkled shirt to begin to spot under his arms. The conning officer stepped aside as he walked directly up to the centerline compass pelorus and confirmed the ship's heading.

As we headed up the channel into port, I asked him, “Captain, what side of the pier do you want to moor the ship?” “We will moor port side to,” he curtly replied with a thick accent—with the left-hand side of the ship against the pier, in other words. I looked down onto the forecastle at the lines already laid out by the boatswain's mates, anticipating a mooring arrangement with the starboard side to the pier.

Fortunately, we would be mooring at the same refueling pier, an island structure in the northeast part of the inner harbor, that Matt Sharpe, the CO of USS
Donald Cook
had referred to in his unofficial e-mails to me. After the exchange with Matt, I already knew that I wanted the ship moored
starboard side to the pier with bow facing out in the event of an emergency. Although it was only in the back of my mind, I was concerned that if
Cole
came under hostile fire or attack, I did not want to waste precious minutes turning the ship around in the middle of the harbor before being able to sail safely out to sea. Since
Cole
was 505 feet long and the pier was about 350 feet long, the bow and stern would stick out from both ends of the pier. Consequently, of the six lines we had available, four would moor us to the pier while the lines at the bow and stern of the ship would be made fast to mooring buoys using small boats that the pilot had already arranged to meet us near the pier. We could get underway even quicker by axing the mooring lines. In that event, those precious minutes would surely save lives.

Chris, as XO, was unhappy with the harbor pilot's determination to moor the ship port side to the pier, and told him so. I looked at Chris and without a word spoken between us, motioned him to back off. Remembering Matt Sharpe telling me how difficult it had been for him to convince the pilot to let
Donald Cook
moor starboard side to the pier, I knew this would have to be handled delicately. The pilot was offered hot tea (another key tip from
Donald Cook
), which he politely accepted. After he had sipped for a few minutes, I again approached him and said it would be much better if we could moor starboard side to the pier. Almost immediately, he lowered his head and began to shake it slowly side to side. I persisted, “If we twist the ship in the harbor now and use the two tugs you have brought out to us, it will save you time and money this afternoon. With the ship moored starboard side to, when we finish refueling, it will only take one tug to lift us off the pier, instead of two. If I have to moor port side to the pier now, I will need two tugs this afternoon to help get us off the pier and turned around in the harbor. With only one tug, we can leave quicker and get back to sea sooner. Also, since I did not know which side you would moor the ship, I already laid out my mooring lines on the starboard side.” I motioned for him to step around from the front of the pelorus and look down to the lines laid out on the forecastle. After quickly glancing down at them, he looked up for a moment, rubbed the slight stubble on his chin, and checked the ship's heading again before he replied.
“OK. We will turn the ship and moor it starboard side to the pier,” and with that, he contacted the tugs on his radio and told them he had changed plans.

Unfortunately, the tugs were clearly not experienced at working a ship like
Cole
next to the pier. What should have taken us ten minutes to get the ship tied up instead took almost an hour. The tugs could not keep the ship in place for more than a few seconds and allow us to tighten on the mooring lines without risk of parting them. After more than thirty minutes of sliding back and forth alongside the pier, I was finally able to convince the pilot to not have the tugs press against the ship while we worked with the line handlers on the pier. In short order, the line handling teams were able to get the first lines to the pier at 0851 and within about fifteen minutes the ship was finally moored.

One of the security measures in the force protection plan I had agreed to implement had been to launch an armed picket-boat into the harbor on fifteen-minute standby. I chose not to carry out that step because I knew that given the geography of the port and the island structure of the refueling pier, a boat not ready for immediate action would be of little use. In time, this decision would have a momentous impact on
Cole
.

By 0935 the crew was finished with the sea and anchor detail. As we stationed the in-port watches, the engineers began the detailed preparations to refuel. Since we would be stationing the sea and anchor detail again later that day to get back underway and leave port, the bridge was left operationally ready and most equipment was not stowed, as it would be for a normal in-port visit. Navigation charts were left out, navigation equipment—the alidades for each bridge wing pelorus—were left out, and the handheld bridge-to-bridge radio was left near my chair.

Walking down from the bridge to my cabin, I was looking forward to getting around the ship. I was not always successful, but at least twice daily I tried to visit as many of the crew's workshops and offices as was practical. Getting out of my cabin and away from the drudgery of paperwork was good for me and just being with the sailors always gave me a sense of pride in how well they were doing in keeping up the ship and working together
as a team. As I walked into the central control station (CCS), the heart and nerve center of the ship's engineering plant, Lieutenant Deborah (“Debbie”) Courtney, my engineer officer, had already signed and approved the watch bill and was now working to make sure everyone was completing the necessary checklists before we actually started pumping fuel. Seeing that everything was well in hand, I continued to walk around the ship and visit with the crew.

I arrived back in my cabin around 1000 and sat down at my desk. The main propulsion assistant (MPA), Ensign Andrew “Drew” Triplett, knocked on my door and asked, “Captain, do you have a minute to review the inport refueling checklist?”

By now we were running behind schedule—something he must have been aware of. As he handed me the sheet he offered to speed up the refueling by having me sign the engineering report now, assuming that Debbie would also verify that the checklist was complete and find everything mechanically in order, especially the fuel valve alignment, so that we could start. I looked at him, smiled, and told him, “MPA, I know you are just trying to speed things up in an effort to get out of this port as soon as possible. Let's wait until the engineer is done with her checks, signs off on the checklist, and
then
I'll sign it.”

Drew, one of my best officers and a true professional, let his head drop to his chest in mock and exaggerated disappointment, and walked out mumbling, for my amusement, “Every time we want to get some work done, procedures get in the way.” He left to await the engineer officer as she finished her checks. Drew had joined the Navy as a young Fireman Recruit and had always been an exceptionally talented and hard working engineer. After thirteen years in the Navy, as a chief petty officer, he decided to become a limited duty officer (LDO), a technical specialist, with the rank of ensign. He was exceptionally well liked by the crew.

This was the last time I saw him alive.

Around 1025, Debbie knocked on the door to my cabin with the completed in-port refueling checklist in hand. As she left my cabin, I heard her calling the quarterdeck watch on the ship's wireless internal communication
system, an internal walkie-talkie system, to inform them that she had permission from me to start refueling the ship. She asked them to hoist the Bravo flag, indicating the ship was conducting refueling operations, and announce over the 1MC general announcing system that the smoking lamp was out, prohibiting everyone from smoking or engaging in any activities that would produce flames or sparks. It seemed like a routine morning as I turned back to my desk and the mounds of paperwork that awaited me. At 1032 the announcement came that refueling had begun.

At 1040, the supply officer, Lieutenant Denise Woodfin, knocked on my door and asked for a few minutes to review some items with me. Denise told me that the Yemeni husbanding (logistics) agent, who had come aboard the ship via boat shortly after arrival alongside the pier, had made all the arrangements for the sewage removal and refueling operations requested in our logistics message to the embassy. The sewage barge, about twenty by forty feet in size, was already tied up to the port side of the ship near the back of the flight deck preparing to remove sewage and waste water. As any good businessman would do, the husbanding agent had made an additional offer to Denise to have three small garbage barges come out to the ship and remove all of our trash, plastic waste, and hazardous waste materials, for the very reasonable equivalent of about $150. He or his colleagues had made the same arrangement, for three garbage boats, for other Navy ships before us. Denise was quite pleased at the prospect of getting all this material off the ship at so little expense. She also foresaw the opportunity to reduce the amount of work when we pulled into Bahrain.

But I told her I didn't want to take up the offer, for several reasons.

First, I tried to run the
Cole
on a fiscally conservative budget and preferred to use as much of the appropriated money as possible for the crew in either purchasing tools to allow them to do their jobs better or items that would benefit them in other ways, like equipment and organizational clothing. The ship was scheduled to arrive back from deployment in February 2001. Norfolk at that time of year was usually cold and wet, and $150 could buy two foul-weather jackets for the boatswain's mates. It
wasn't a large amount of money, but I preferred to spend it in the United States rather than in this small, hole-in-the-wall port. Second, none of the
Cole
's storage areas was overflowing with any trash or other items. I also knew the growing collection of waste paper and metal trash could be disposed of for free that evening once we were at sea and far enough away from land. Additionally, there was more than enough storage capacity on the ship to last until we pulled into Bahrain in about five days for our in-theater briefings by Naval Forces Central Command/Fifth Fleet and, hopefully, some liberty. I had also been told that Bahrain had facilities available for visiting ships to remove their plastic waste and hazardous material at no charge.

Hearing my explanation, Denise politely rolled her eyes and smiled as she walked out of my cabin. I thought the issue was closed, but she returned at 1050, this time with the executive officer in tow. As they walked in, I asked, with some amusement, “I take it you want to discuss the garbage barges some more?” Both laughed as Chris began a lengthy explanation about why spending this $150 was a good investment in time and savings for the crew. From both of their perspectives it was well worth the money, even considering that the ship would need more foul-weather jackets in February. I looked at both of them, shook my head, and said, “OK, fine. Go ahead and bring the boats out to us. Let's pass the word and get everything off the ship.” The $150 was not worth the minor battle this was shaping up to be. How long it was going to take to refuel the ship remained foremost in everyone's mind.

Denise had anticipated that the XO could get me to change my mind, and had already notified the quarterdeck that three garbage boats would be approaching the ship. Two of them had already crossed the harbor and were now alongside. One was back by the flight deck and fantail area near the sewage barge, collecting trash and hazardous materials; the other was amidships, directly below the area between the stacks, where it was collecting plastic waste being brought up from the plastic waste processing room under the mess decks.

Chris brought some good news. The refueling was going faster than we expected. “We're probably going to be done between 1230 and 1300,”
he told me. “I would like to start lunch early and get everyone moving through the line so we can get the sea and anchor detail stationed early in preparation for leaving port.” Instead of the 300 to 500 gallons per minute that we had been expecting, we were getting closer to 2,500 gallons per minute. This huge difference in pressure had initially complicated the refueling operation, since that amount of fuel being pumped onto the ship so quickly was over-pressurizing the fuel tanks, threatening to cause a spill. The
Cole
's engineers had to ask the Yemeni fuel workers on the pier to close down the valve to slow the rate to around 2,000 gallons per minute.

Chris had already discussed with the supply officer the possibility of opening the galley and mess decks early to feed the crew. Since we normally started feeding the crew around 1130, the supply officer quickly checked with the petty officer in charge of the noon meal, Mess Specialist Third Class Ronchester Santiago, in the galley and promptly determined that opening thirty minutes early would not pose any problems. Everything was lining up to allow us to leave earlier than expected.