Today in History

11 April 2005

The LOUISVILLE has been inport now after a month long underway to and from San Diego- well, the waters off of San Diego including the harbor, but not one foot on dry land even after pulling intot he harbor 3 times to bring on extra people, food, and parts.

Bastards.

0700 Today we had to be on the boat at 0500 so that we could get underway at 0900. Gotta love that no-sleep thing before an underway. I am writing this part as I sit here at Officer/LPO call listtening to the Captain try to explain to us what a good deal it is to get this underway in.. instead of spening it with our families with an upcoming 6 month deployment?

1030 Ship is underway and the maneuvering watch has been secured. I came down from topside in to the belly of tHe beast but not before I got my last breath of air, free from chemicals and made by Mother Nature, not by the Father of the Oxygen Generator. Yet again, my section takes the normal watch and I get to bob around on the surface until we submerge. Of course the C.O. wants to run the Navigation Training channel off the coast of Waikiki, another slap in my face as I look at the occasional shot towards the beach on the periscope repeater in Sonar.

1130 Sweet, I just got relieved. We are switching to the Vulcan Death Watches* so I do get some rack time before my watch at 1930. Bunky, here I come!

1500 Can't sleep. Got up and read until dinner (1730). Went back to the rack.

1815 Writing this in the rack. Still can't sleep. WTF?

1830 Wake ups. Some jackass opened my curtain to tell me to wake up. I hate that. This rack is like the only private place I have. I shit on him and told him not to open curtains.

1930 Relieved the watch. Everyone is dead tired. I have a pretty good section so the chit-chat should keep me awake until 0200 when I get relieved. The focus of this watch will be to stay awake which is a difficult task with Moon Pie (nicknames used to protect the innocent and/or stupid) on the primary safety-of-ship stack.

I have subscribed to the fact that stuidity is its own reward whenever I think about the shit that goes on inside this submarine. For security reasons I can't go into it in much detail on this forum but I truly believe that what comes around goes around. The few idiots that make the lives of the masses miserable will get thiers.

I have seen it happen many times and like some twisted Lion King plot the circle of stupidity is reborn. The only comfort one can take is that you will transfer soon, the asshole responsible for making your life miserable will transfer soon, get fired and kicked off the boat, or die in a submarine mishap.

*Vulcan Death Watches- During a normal underway, submariners stand watch on a 6 On/12 Off cycle. For example, I stand 6 hours of watch in the Sonar shack and then I am off for 12 hours before I am on watch again. Essentially, we work on an 18-hour day and time-of-day becomes relative. Looking at your watch, you wonder if it is the 0400 wake up or the 1600 wakup. Only when one finds out what is for chow do you know for sure.

Vulcan Death Watches are a useless watchstanding configuration that the Commanding Officer and Engineer believe will 1)Maximize drill time by running the drills in an acccelerated off watch cycle and, 2)Maximize sleep for the crew. Instead of 6 on and 12 off, the watch routine is changed to a 4/4/4/6/6 watchstanding cycle. So, imagine working with this type of work/sleep routine. It stresses the crew, serves no usefull purpose for drills other than turning the underway into an experiment on sleep depravation, and just plain pisses people off. The meals become soup-downs to facilitate watch reliefs which means freezer burnt bologna, shitty cheese, and smashed commercial bread or shitty homemade bread.

Comments

  1. Great. As if going through it all the first time with you wasn't crappy enough, I get to do it again.....

    (You know I love reading/hearing about your experiences - crappy as they are).

    ReplyDelete

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