DATE: Wednesday, September 24, 1997         TAG: 9709240451

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   60 lines

80-DEGREE WEATHER WILL REFRESH CREWS OF THORN, NICHOLAS AFTER PICKING UP PEOPLE IN BERMUDA, SHIPS WILL RETURN FROM GULF ON FRIDAY.

Crew members aboard the destroyer Thorn and the guided-missile frigate Nicholas aren't shivering as they enter the Western Atlantic on their way home from six months in the Persian Gulf.

But Cmdr. Martin Drake does admit to wearing his jacket against the 75- to 80-degree chill: When they were off the coast of Muscat, Oman, several days ago, the temperature was 137 degrees.

And the cool Atlantic closer to home takes some getting used to, the Thorn's commanding officer said.

``Actually we hit a cool spell when we arrived there,'' Drake said by satellite telephone Tuesday, as the two ships and their combined crew of 575 steamed 200 miles east of Bermuda, bound for arrival at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on at 10 a.m. Friday.

``The week before we got there it was in the mid-140s, and maybe a little higher.''

Cmdr. Tim Sprague, commanding officer of the Nicholas, said the hot summer in the Persian Gulf required careful planning to make certain crew members drank plenty of water, dressed appropriately and didn't overstress themselves.

That was a challenge: The ships are capable of making their own drinking and cooling water, but it was much more difficult when the sea temperatures stayed between 85 and 90 degrees and desert sand choked the air, Sprague said.

``We went into this deployment knowing it would be the hot season over there,'' Drake said. ``So we did a lot of things to groom our coolers, painted the topside decks white and educated the crew to only use certain accesses to the weather decks.

``We were able to keep relatively cool,'' he said. ``I won't say we were hanging meat in our work spaces, but it was okay. It was hard work on the engineers.''

Known as the ``Battle Pair,'' the Thorn and Nicholas shadowed one another throughout the six months, even swapping crew members and helicopters when needed.

``Some of these guys have two hats,'' said Drake, referring to Navy baseball caps embroidered with each ship's name.

The crews boarded several merchant vessels while enforcing United Nations sanctions against Iraq. In several cases they detained ships that were caught smuggling gas and oil out of the country, or trying to bring forbidden merchandise in.

Neither Drake nor Sprague would talk in detail about the seizures. ``But we were very successful at what we were doing because we knew how to operate together,'' Sprague allowed.

Drake and Sprague were Naval Academy classmates, Class of '78, and their ships have been part of Destroyer Squadron 18, which has enabled them to work and train together for more than a year.

The ships plan to pick up some of the crews' relatives in Bermuda today for the last leg of the trip, known as a ``Tiger Cruise.'' The passengers generally are fathers, brothers, uncles and sons of crew members.

Sprague will have a chance to show off the ship to his father, a retired Navy chief warrant officer; his brother, a Naval Reserve captain; and his son, a Kellam High School student.

``They'll have plenty of time to critique me,'' he said. ``But having three generations of us together will be a lot of fun.''

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