Having been to Port Orchard, Washington three years in a row, even with my limited vision, I have come to know what the coast of Bremerton, across Puget Sound, looks like. During our most recent trip, I noticed a large white something that had not been there before, so I asked my husband if it was a new building. He was driving so he couldn’t study it properly. “I’m not sure,” he replied.
The next day, we parked in a lot so that the new addition in Bremerton was a straight shot from us on the other side of the water. Using binoculars, Mister Rain tried to determine what it was. “It looks like a building that’s wrapped,” was his report.
Having dinner at a restaurant in Port Orchard a few nights later, our table by the windows allowed the mystery shape to taunt us from across the Sound. We asked our server what it was and he didn’t know what we were talking about. Checking with his colleagues, no one had any idea what it was, or, in some cases, like our server, that it was even there.
Striking up a conversation with two ladies sitting next to us, one of the women informed us that the structure in question was temporary housing for military personnel whose ship had come into the Bremerton Naval Station. We thanked her for providing the answer we had been searching for since our arrival four days earlier.
The following day we met with a man we have befriended who lives in Port Orchard. Heavily involved in the region’s maritime community, we shared with him our curiosity about the large white form on the Bremerton shore, as well as what we had learned.
“That’s not quite right,” he kindly corrected. “It’s a Navy ship that is shrink wrapped for repair. They do that to protect it from water, salt, etc. If debris gets into the internal systems, that’s a problem. Externally, it keeps the metal from rust and corrosion.”
I take great comfort in the military’s ability to keep things a secret, so much so that the residents around a Naval station don’t even notice a sizable form popping up along the water’s edge.
That’s what I call a need to boat basis.
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