Underway
Well I thought I'd take some time and write about life on a Submarine, Over the last 4 months or so I've spent over 3 months out at sea, so I think I got a pretty good idea of what it's like out there! And though I've done lots of talkin about Subs on here in the past this is the first time since I actually got on board I've talked about it.
Life underway is hard. No way around it, it sucks. But we have a group of 140 guys that are all in the same situation you are so that makes it a little easier because we all understand what the others are going through and help each other make it through all the bull shit and stupid freakin stuff we gotta do out there. We have a bell in the Machinery Room that when you ring it that means you wanna rumble, and all the 'A-Gangers' will come runnin at ya swingin. That's a GREAT way to burn off some steam, I'm starting to heal up and all my cuts and bruises are disapeering now so that's good! One thing that sucks about being underway is that when you do get cut or something it takes a long time to heal cause we have a lower concentration of oxygen and stuff down there so it takes about twice as long for any kind of wound to heal up when we're underway. At one point during this last underway we had oxygen down to 12.5 percent! the average Oxygen level it the atmosphere outside is about 21%. And lemme tell ya when the oxygen level is that low you dont really notice it except you get really really tired really really fast, which is horrible cause we're already exhausted! Speaking of which, I drank more coffee during the last few months that I have in my entire freakin life. I would go through 4-5 cups of coffee every watch, which was a 6 hour time frame. probably tearing my stomach to shreds but I'd rather be sick than fall asleep on watch and cause the boat to hit a merchant or something! Another thing I dont know if I've explained exactly what I do on the boat as a FT before or not so here goes. During normal operations my job is to track contacts. Basically SONAR will hear something and they will say "Conn, Sonar, Gained new Spherical Array Contact bearing 345 (or whatever the bearing is)" Then from the data I recieve from SONAR, it's my job to determine the contact's 'solution' which consists of his Range (Rh), Speed (Dmho), Course (Ct), Range Rate (DRh), etc... and it's my job during normal ops to keep us outside of a preset safety range and/or counterdetection range of the contact whether it be a transiting Merchant ship, or a hostile submarine or anything in between. Most of what we have are merchants, they are easy cause they just pretty much go in a straight line so we get the solution, fine tune it and we can just leave it sit cause he's gonna keep doing that till he gets out of SONAR's aquisition Range. Also if say I have a good solution and we determine this contact to be a possible threat, we will assign presets and enter that solution into the system for the torpedo so see so that it knows where the target will be if/when we shoot. But Though I am a Weapons rate and my job often revolves around the weapons on the boat most of what we do it just track contacts to maintain safety of ship. OK, well I dont really feel like typing any more right now so I'm gonna get offline and read for awhile till Amber get's back
OH, speaking of which, I have some BIG BIG BIG news! Last night I asked Amber to marry me!!! She said yes! We have a tentative date set for July 3rd, 2006! wow, it's still wierd to think that I have a fiance!
Life underway is hard. No way around it, it sucks. But we have a group of 140 guys that are all in the same situation you are so that makes it a little easier because we all understand what the others are going through and help each other make it through all the bull shit and stupid freakin stuff we gotta do out there. We have a bell in the Machinery Room that when you ring it that means you wanna rumble, and all the 'A-Gangers' will come runnin at ya swingin. That's a GREAT way to burn off some steam, I'm starting to heal up and all my cuts and bruises are disapeering now so that's good! One thing that sucks about being underway is that when you do get cut or something it takes a long time to heal cause we have a lower concentration of oxygen and stuff down there so it takes about twice as long for any kind of wound to heal up when we're underway. At one point during this last underway we had oxygen down to 12.5 percent! the average Oxygen level it the atmosphere outside is about 21%. And lemme tell ya when the oxygen level is that low you dont really notice it except you get really really tired really really fast, which is horrible cause we're already exhausted! Speaking of which, I drank more coffee during the last few months that I have in my entire freakin life. I would go through 4-5 cups of coffee every watch, which was a 6 hour time frame. probably tearing my stomach to shreds but I'd rather be sick than fall asleep on watch and cause the boat to hit a merchant or something! Another thing I dont know if I've explained exactly what I do on the boat as a FT before or not so here goes. During normal operations my job is to track contacts. Basically SONAR will hear something and they will say "Conn, Sonar, Gained new Spherical Array Contact bearing 345 (or whatever the bearing is)" Then from the data I recieve from SONAR, it's my job to determine the contact's 'solution' which consists of his Range (Rh), Speed (Dmho), Course (Ct), Range Rate (DRh), etc... and it's my job during normal ops to keep us outside of a preset safety range and/or counterdetection range of the contact whether it be a transiting Merchant ship, or a hostile submarine or anything in between. Most of what we have are merchants, they are easy cause they just pretty much go in a straight line so we get the solution, fine tune it and we can just leave it sit cause he's gonna keep doing that till he gets out of SONAR's aquisition Range. Also if say I have a good solution and we determine this contact to be a possible threat, we will assign presets and enter that solution into the system for the torpedo so see so that it knows where the target will be if/when we shoot. But Though I am a Weapons rate and my job often revolves around the weapons on the boat most of what we do it just track contacts to maintain safety of ship. OK, well I dont really feel like typing any more right now so I'm gonna get offline and read for awhile till Amber get's back
OH, speaking of which, I have some BIG BIG BIG news! Last night I asked Amber to marry me!!! She said yes! We have a tentative date set for July 3rd, 2006! wow, it's still wierd to think that I have a fiance!