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Since he was traveling by gigantic boat and not by car, he’d been en route since Monday.

“I’m sitting in my cabin right now,” he said.

Captain Rotruck is the commanding officer of the Mercy, the 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship heading to the Port of L.A. to alleviate pressure on the region’s health care systems caused by an anticipated surge in coronavirus patients.

Officials have said the medical staff aboard the ship will treat Angelenos with conditions not related to Covid-19, like heart attacks, or who have been in car crashes.

Though the task may sound grim, for many of the roughly 1,000 sailors aboard, including a full-time crew of 61 who maintain the vessel, it’s a new kind of mission, Captain Rotruck said.

“I see a tremendous amount of enthusiasm,” he said. “It’s very unusual for us to be able to do something this directly for the American people.”

Typically, he said, the ship goes out every couple years to provide care or to help build medical capacity in other countries, like the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

This time, the mission is hitting much closer to home, not just because it’s on American soil, but because many of the crew are based in San Diego.