ABOARD THE USS BONHOMME RICHARD -- ABOARD THE USS BONHOMME RICHARD (May 24, 2007) – The Bonhomme Richard post office and a working party of 20 supplementary personnel prepared outgoing mail in the hangar bay yesterday to send off during today’s vertical replenishment (VERTREP).
“We expect to receive 9,000 pounds of mail during [today’s] VERTREP,” said PC3 Matt Smith. “We should also receive it again when we hit Bahrain and each day we are there because it’s a working port.”
More than 140 bags of packages weighing more than 3,000 pounds were loaded into 13 four-and-a-half foot square boxes during yesterday’s evolution.
“All together the entire evolution took around three hours to complete with the help of the working party,” said Smith. “We even had a few chiefs out here helping out.”
Once the mail leaves the ship, it is sent from Bahrain to John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in New York by way of Rome, Italy.
“All of the mail is sent priority shipping to JFK,” said Smith, a native of Austin, Texas. “It should arrive for dispersal in New York in just a couple of days. The packages should then reach San Diego in five to seven working days.”
PCC (SW/AW) Tony Zarate said mail deliveries to the ship should become more frequent now that we are in the Gulf.
“Now that we are in one central area of the world we can expect to receive mail more often,” said Zarate, a native of Los Angeles. “In general, mail will also be delivered a lot faster back to the states because there are a lot of flights leaving the Gulf that can carry outgoing mail.”