The Navy wouldn't confirm where the carrier is headed, but all signs point to a final farewell from its long-time Bremerton homeport.
The USS John C. Stennis departed Bremerton without much fanfare early Monday afternoon for what could be the ship's final time getting underway for deployment as one of Naval Base Kitsap's two homeported carriers.
Navy officials would not confirm that the carrier was deploying or if this departure was the last time the Stennis was leaving its more than decade-long homeport before its scheduled homeport shift to Virginia, although many signs point to such action.
"I can confirm John C. Stennis is underway, however we do not discuss future operations," said U.S. Third Fleet spokesman Cmdr. John Fage.
When the Stennis last deployed in 2016, the Navy issued a statement two days in advance of the carrier's departure to notify the public. This time around, no prior announcement was made.
A small handful of onlookers stood along the popular waterfront spot at Bachmann Park to bid a possible final farewell to the carrier as Navy tugboats guided the Stennis through Rich Passage.
Among them was Lydia Collins, who watched as her husband, a nuclear machinist's mate, sailed away on the Stennis. She brought their infant daughter, Zoe, to the pier-side farewell.
"It's kinda terrible," Collins said. "She's three months old, and so he won't see her until she's 10 months old."
Collins previously served in the Navy and met her husband, George, while they were both assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln while it was homeported at Naval Station Everett.
"I was previously in the Navy, so this should be easy for me, but it's not," Collins said. "It's heartwrenching. You know it's going to be fine, and the days are going to pass by quickly, but the first couple of days are awful for me."
Many Stennis families have already moved across the country in advance of the carrier's upcoming homeport swap to Virginia, and Collins said she and her family would soon be packing up and heading east after spending almost two years in the Pacific Northwest this time around.
"When we came back up here it was kind of special," Collins said. "But I'm excited to go back to Virginia, because that's where my best friend lives and my family's from Texas, so it's slightly closer."
For those who live in Bremerton long-term, the carrier will be missed.
Upon the completion of the carrier's deployment, the Stennis is scheduled to conduct a homeport swap to Naval Station Norfolk in advance of the 23-year-old carrier's planned mid-life refueling overhaul.
It was a bittersweet departure that "was like saying goodbye to family," said Alan Beam, a retired Navy captain who is a former president of the Bremerton Olympic Peninsula Council of the United States Navy League.
"During her stay in Bremerton we got a chance to know her crew and have developed life-long relationships," Beam said. "They were active in the community and could always be counted on lending a helping hand. They truly will be missed."
The carrier has spent the past year getting ready to deploy following a six-month maintenance period at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, which was the largest work package ever completed on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in a six-month timeframe.
"Our entire shipyard takes great pride in seeing the warships we maintain depart to execute their mission in support of our Navy and our nation," said shipyard commanding officer Capt. Howard Markle.
When the Stennis returned from its last underway period in September, the carrier had completed what's often the final stage in the pre-deployment workup cycle, the composite training unit exercise, known as COMPTUEX. A press release said the carrier was certified as a "deployment-ready and capable of commencing missions overseas."
The carrier's under-the-radar departure was the latest demonstration of the Navy's policy shift of refraining from publicly discussing ship movements of any kind — whether it's for training exercises, maintenance cycles, homeport changes or deployments.
The change comes as the Navy seeks to implement the Department of Defense's "Dynamic Force Employment" strategy, which calls for greater flexibility and unpredictability in how Navy vessels operate.
Under the new deployment strategy, there is a chance the Stennis could return to Bremerton at some time during deployment for such a port visit, but Navy officials declined to comment on the likelihood of such an event occurring.
Naval Base Kitsap's dock space won't remain vacant for long after the Stennis' departure since the Navy plans for Bremerton to remain a two-carrier town for the foreseeable future.
The USS Carl Vinson will conduct a homeport swap to Bremerton from San Diego sometime within the next few months in advance of a year-long planned dry dock maintenance cycle at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
The Navy also recently announced the decision to continue homeporting the USS Nimitz in Bremerton rather than have the carrier return to its former homeport of Naval Station Everett in 2019.
The Stennis came to Bremerton from its former homeport of San Diego in January 2005, just before the Carl Vinson changed homeports from Bremerton to Virginia in advance of its own mid-life refueling overhaul.
In the years the carrier has called Bremerton home, the Stennis has deployed a number of times in support of combat operations in the Middle East and conducted freedom of navigation patrols all across the globe.
The carrier launched almost 8,000 combat sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Arabian Gulf in 2007. Pilots flew more than 22,000 flight hours and dropped nearly 90,000 pounds of ordnance in support of coalition forces operating on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2011, the carrier once again returned to the Arabian Gulf to launch more air support missions for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation New Dawn.
Aircraft from the Stennis' embarked carrier air wing flew the Navy's last sortie over Iraq in support of New Dawn in December 2011.
The Stennis returned from deployment in March 2012, but it found itself back at sea five months later for an unplanned, surge deployment in August 2012.
During the seven-month deployment to the Middle East and Western Pacific, the Stennis launched planes into Iraq and Afghanistan, rescued Iranian fishermen from Somali pirates and passed through the Strait of Hormuz just as Iran was threatening to shut it down.
When the Stennis last deployed in January 2016, the carrier was the centerpiece of the Navy's "Great Green Fleet" initiative that used biofuel and energy conservation measures with the goal for the Navy to "become a more flexible fighting force," according to a press release.
While underway, the Stennis spent seven months operating in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, including 60 days spent patrolling the South China Sea, and participated in numerous multinational exercises.
Although the Navy has not announced where the Stennis will go while underway, the carrier returns to patrolling the seas amid rising tensions with China over its activity in the disputed waterways of the South China Sea.
For decades, China has asserted a historical claim to much of the sea's strategically and economically important waterways and reefs. Its claim is not recognized by international maritime law.
At the beginning of October, a Chinese destroyer sailed within 45 yards of the Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur in what Navy officials called an "unsafe and unprofessional maneuver" as the Decatur sailed within 12 miles of the disputed Spratly Island chain.
In September, China denied a U.S. request to make a port call in Hong Kong from the Wasp Expeditionary Strike Group with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the strike group's lead amphibious assault ship.
A similar situation occurred the last time the Stennis was underway in May 2016, when Chinese officials canceled the strike group's scheduled port visit to Hong Kong due to rising political tensions between the two countries.
Earlier this year, the Navy uninvited the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy from participating in the major multinational biennial training exercise Rim of the Pacific because of the growing militarization of the South China Sea's disputed reefs.