A day out sea.

Recently I have gotten a few emails from people asking what it is really like to live and work on board a modern US Aircraft carrier as an Enlisted man. It is interesting and not anything like what is shown by Hollywood on shows like "JAG" or in movies like "Top Gun". So here it is a typical day for myself out to sea while I was on a 6 month cruise.
To begin with the only thing that you could really claim as your own space is where you sleep, but even that it at a premium. This shot here shows some elementary kids in a berthing compartment on board the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). As one can see, all you have is the bed and if you are lucky and have a locker underneath the bed. Like what the Asian girl on the right side of the picture is looking out of. Then someplace else in this compartment, which can range in about 200-500 square feet in space, is another pair of lockers not much bigger then the ones most people have at their local gyms. That really isn't that much place to store things. So most of us only pack our uniforms, about 2-3 days worth of civilian clothes. Entertainment wise, a few people will stick a CD player and a small CD case in their locker or a portable game system. A few more people will bring their laptops with themselves. Just to keep yourself entertained. Myself, I usually brought a Game boy and a few large books to read while on cruise. Now I am 5ft 9in (or about 1.75 meters for you readers that use metric measurements) tall and I have to sleep sort of crunched up to fit myself in one of these beds or racks as we call them. There is just a pair of blue curtains to block yourself off from the rest of the world and a small reading light to use. At the foot of this little rack attached to the bulkhead someplace is a compartment for a rescue breathing device so if there is a fire you can escape from the space and either get to the flight deck or to the hangar bay. This is where I will begin my day. I am a heavy sleep so I have two alarm clocks to wake me up. One is an old fashioned windup the other is a battery powered electric one.
One I wake up, it is usually a fight to either get out without stepping on someone else or with out being stepped on. Then trying to get dressed. Most people on a carrier will work a typical 12-hour day, either 0700 in the morning or 1900 at night will be the start of their shift. If you are lucky then you will be the only one in your little cubical getting up. If not then either you are fighting with 5 other people or at the most one other person.

Some people will stagger off to what we call a head or the bathroom and do the three "S's". The three S's are shower, shave, and sh*t. The hope is that by doing this you will have given a few other people a chance to have gotten dress and out of your way. After getting dressed then it is a decision based on what the time is. Do I forgo breakfast and head to work or stand in line forever and try to put something in my stomach. The really hard part about making this decision is how close you actually are to needing to be at work. Most supervisors like everyone to show up between 45-30 minutes prior to the shift starting. If you want to grab breakfast then it is stumble either forward or aft from where you live and down (or up ) a few decks to the end of the line for the mess decks.

When you get down to the start of the Mess decks, you are served cafeteria style. That is pick up a tray and go down the line picking what you want for food. In the morning if there are fresh eggs on board then you can get eggs made to order, if not then you have a choice of omelettes or scrambled eggs. The omelette really isn't that complex when they make it up; either a cheese, ham, or a Denver style. From there you have the choice of either pancakes or waffles, sausage or bacon, grits or home fried potatoes, topped off with either white bread or a donut.

Once you have gotten all of your food then you need to look for a place to sit. Some carriers that I have been on have fixed tables in selected spots and then you have long tables with small attached stools that can be fold up out of the way to go and eat on. Eat real fast and then head off to work.

Once at work it is 12 hours of fun either working on the flight deck or down below in a shop. All spaces usually have a TV. Most of us in a squadron will have the great TV show called "Roger Ball. ". "Roger Ball" is the PLAT broadcast being played on one of the screens, this is especially important to us maintainers because we can know which catapults are operating, when our aircraft are coming in, heck a smart salty sailor can even use it to figure out the weather on the flight deck. Some of the administration spaces will have one of the movie channels running or one of the other channels from satellite TV.

Sometime in the middle of the day is lunch when one can repeat the experience from breakfast, except this time will be some sort of meat, veggies, starch product. Again shovel the food into you in 30mins. Head back to work and keep working until shift change comes around. Oh and repeat again heading to the mess deck either before shift change or after shift change.

From there it is head back to your rack and either change out to some gym clothes and head to one of the gyms to exercise. Or head off to one of the stores on the ship and do some basic restocking of your shower kit. Other people will stay up and play cards or watch cruise movies on the TV in one of the crews lounges spread through out the ship. From there then go grab a shower and head off to bed. Repeat again for 190 days.

The only variations in this schedule will either be a drill day, when the powers to be decided to have a GQ drill or man over board drill. Then there is the need to extend your day because you have to head off to medical or dental for a check up or head some admin space and fill out paperwork for something or other. Laundry return day is another fun variation when everyone will pass out the clothes in your berthing compartment or you can need to head down to self service laundry to clean your civilian clothes. Self-Service is another fun line to stand in forever. There have been times that I have gotten done with work at 1900, skipped dinner and headed back to grab my laundry bag went down with a my CD player and a book, waited in line for ever, got a washer, compete for a dryer, and then back up top after it is all said and done only to look at my watch and realize that it is 0100 in the morning.

The whole thing really turns into groundhog day until the end of cruise. It seems the only days when things are brightened up is when you get regular postal mail from family. It is amazing how you come in to work one day and find out that mail call went down that day. Then here is a letter or care package from someone that cares about you.

That it my opinions about a typical day out to sea. The good thing about being out to sea is knowing that your day is going to be similar day in and day out. It really isn't that stressful, because you don't need try and get off early that day to go grocery store or pick up the dry-cleaning. If you do it right as well and set up your bills for autopay, then that is even less stress. All you need to do is worry about whether the food on the mess decks is worth eating, if you mailed off the latest letter to your family and whether the shower is going to be Arctic Ocean cold or hot springs scalding hot.

Hi-jinks and adventures ashore-Foreign style Part Duex

So the second day of liberty in the wonderful city of Cannes comes along. This time though the launches start moving around at 10am. So myself and a two good buddies all decide to go grab some brunch in town and walk around take in the sites. We had heard that there is a tour boat which for about 15 francs one could take and go visit the island that Alexander Dumas wrote his classic story "The Count of Monte Cristo" about. Then somewhere else in town was the hotel that Mr. Dumas stayed while writing a couple more of his books. We discussed trying to get all of this in as we rode the liberty launch into town.
It was still pretty early in the morning by the time we put feet down on the solid ground again. We stopped over at the little food tent that the mess cooks had set up, grab a bottle of water between the two of us and grab some fresh fruit. Walked out the security compound and headed into town. Because it was a typical summer day in the south of France we decided to find an open air restaurant to grab a bite to eat at.
Walking along the main street at the water front, we just taking it all in. I happen across a simple convenience store and stopped in real quick to grab a pack of chewing gum and grab see if I could grab the a newspaper that was written in English. I had known that in a variety of places the "Times of London" and the "New York Times" were sold overseas. I got lucky and had actually found a copy of both the "New York Times" and the "Times of London" at this convenience store along with a pack of gum. After walking out of there we found the little restaurant to grab brunch at. It was primarily outside and gave a pretty good view of the harbor and the beaches.
We sat down and ordered up some grub, both of my friends are devouring the sports page from the NYT because they are baseball nuts. I was sitting there reading the sports page from the "Times of London" when I came across a section talking about the starting grid for the Monaco Grand Prix. After skimming the grid and then reading a couple of article about the race for that weekend, I realized that I wanted to go. Over lunch I finally conned both of my buddies into wanting to go. I used the classic, "Since we are already this close...." and "May not get another chance on the government dime...." debates. After about 2 hours of talking, I finally won them over.
So after seeing a few of the sights we wanted to in town, we walked around and found a European version of Ticketmaster and tried to get tickets for the race, only to find out that they had sold out weeks ago. Then all of us did the collective thought at the same second and shouted "MWR! They got to have bought some tickets". So we went back to fleet landing and just happen to run across the Fun Boss. The Fun Boss is a civilian who is brought on board a ship to help organize tours, trips, and other fun things to keep sailors entertained while out to sea. So we cornered the Fun Boss and asked what if they had scored or could score us some tickets to the race. The Fun Boss answered up that nope, there was to be no tickets for USS Oldboat to send anyone to the race. All of us were pretty well bummed out.
We started to walk away from Fleet Landing, looking for someplace to go and drown our sorrows. As we walked along the harbor front again, we noticed that a number of the shops that were opened were starting to bring everything inside. A couple comments about that and wondering why, when my friend Jason looked at his watched.
"Well guys it is only 1730. Lets go and find some nice restaurant that is squid free or close to squid free.", he said.
All of us agreed. So we staggered back down around the harbor front and at a turn we walked up an alleyway. Found just a few streets back a nice little restaurant that again had a nice view of the harbor, a nice jazz band playing, and outdoor seating. We sat around talking about how bummed we were about not going to race and what we were all going to do the next day. All of us were lucky in that we didn't draw duty until the final day in port.
The more we talked about how cool it would of been to seen a race, the more we got annoyed. That was until a gentleman a couple tables across from us got up and walked over. He came over and said that he couldn't help but overheard our conversation. He then mentioned that he was a member of the garage crew for BMW.

He invited us to join him and a couple other members of his crew at a few tables over from ours. We had already eaten and were just enjoying some beers, so we picked up and sat in. Greetings and intros all the way around, he introduced himself as Steve. He was an ex-pat American, was in the US Army as a tanker stationed with a unit in Germany. He got out after Desert Storm and pinged around in the European racing circuits. Finally got picked up by BMW just as they were starting their Formula 1 racing career. He did the basic garage things to a car or to tweak an engine or body before it goes on a practice run or the night before the big race. He then mentioned that he could get us pit passes if we wanted them. All he wanted was a Zippo and a command ballcap from USS Oldboat. It seemed that his father was on Oldboat when she was younger and he just wanted some memorabilia. We said deal and agreed on where to meet him over at Monaco, he then said nuts to that and told us to give him a call and he would send a company car to pick us up.

The next with our gear in tow, we made the phone call and had a chance to be behind pit row watching the Monaco Grand Prix. It was awesome and the only thing that I wish I had remember to have done was brought my camera to have gotten some photos. After the race all 3 of us went off with Steve and his crew to a nice restaurant in a casino and enjoy dinner on the companies dime. Even though all of the teams cars did not finish the race, it was still cool to be there and watch the race.

Hi-jinks and adventures ashore-Foreign style

So it came to be that USS Oldboat was on her peaceful summer cruise in the Mediterranean. We had done our support of the NATO mission in Yugoslavia by flying a couple recon assets over Bosnia and Kosovo taking pictures for something or another. Also drawing the tax-free pay for the month since we hung around for a couple of days from April to June. So it came to be that after two weeks the Admiral in charge of our battle group decided we had saved enough money. So we pulled into a beautiful French city called Cannes. It is famous for some sort of film festival, I don't know. What I do know is the place is dripping in money, beautiful women, and history. How bad is it dripping in money, while I was there we saw a Yacht pull in drop the back end and a little Mini drove off the Yacht and around town.

Anyhow, we pulled in on a Friday around noon. It wasn't until something like 3 in the afternoon that we could start to go ashore. Liberty call usually starts with the highest ranking people first and then filters its way on down. So at 3:01pm (1501 for you non-military types) the ships general announcing system started the cattle call with "Liberty Call, Liberty Call for all Officers and Chiefs". At which point everyone but the duty section quit working and hustled off to our berthing compartments to throw on their best mack-daddy outfits.

One of the interesting things that sailors have to put up with is the liberty attire in a port. What it is varies from port to port and even day to day sometimes. At the time Sixth Fleet required that everyone go ashore wearing the minimum of nice pants and a collared shirt. A pair of clean blue jeans and a polo shirt works perfectly. Usually the make verboten for us the wear is things that show American pride or would insult the locals. So people trying to get off wearing NY Yankee caps, Bulls jerseys, or even cowboy boots were turned back to change into something else.

After navigating all that one ends up waiting in line to catch the liberty launch. This is usually a tour boat or some sort of passenger ferry that is hired to run from the after end of the carrier to what is termed "Fleet Landing". The good launches are smart enough to have some folks hawking food and soda, the really smart operators will have booze or beer on board. So one could grab the local version of the Cheetos, a Coke bottle in the local language or a local beer and enjoy the 15 to 20 minutes of joy bounding away from the ship with local cash in the your pocket and trying to decided what to do first.

I got ashore with a friend of mine named Tony (buddies are required in foreign ports) and one of the first things we headed off to do was fine a local restaurant with genuine and authentic French food. We found some little restaurant right by the bay and silhouetted the ship and the setting sun. It was great and looked really beautiful. As we sat their talking about what to go and see next, a bunch of very beautiful girls sat down at the table next from us. Both of Tony and myself had about half a bottle of red wine between us after eating some local food. We were getting giggles and eyes from the girls as we started to talk about whether to just sit here with another bottle of wine and enjoy the house band or go and find other excitement. What finally broke the ice was, one of the girls in an almost perfect "Daisy Duke" southern accent ask us "Y'll Americans?"

Tony and I looked each other in the eye and had a quick conversation with just some facial movements, which basically lead to us staying and having these three beautiful girls join us. We found out talking to them that they were college students from some college in upstate New York and they were doing the study aboard for the summer. The plan was to visit some major cities involved in Western History or something like that. Since both me and Tony were history buff we got on beautifully with these girls. The most they knew about us was that we were from Virginia and we fixed airplanes and in town for the weekend. All of which was perfectly true, we just didn't say that we were sailors, lived in Norfolk, and were going to leave Tuesday morning on the next high tide. We did fix planes since we worked with the aircraft parts. They didn't ask anymore and we really didn't steer the conversation anymore into our backgrounds.

Okay that being said we picked up the tab for the girls dinner and talked them into hanging around to listen to the house band at this restaurant. It really wasn't that bad of a band. They did instrumentals of just about everything from some early 50's rock up to some 80's new wave. As the dinner crowd broke off around 945pm the waiters started to clear the tables inside off and move a few away from the bandstand. Dancing! Oh joy, one of my least favorite adventures. I am just horrible. I can sort of two-step, but anything more or less I look like I am having a seizure. I did my best at dancing. I held my own. As midnight struck at the local church bells the girls want to go someplace else, we looked at our watches and realized that our carriage was going to turn back into a pumpkin at 0200 in the morning. So we had about an hour to really have some fun, the lead girl Mandy came out and said "Well we are staying right around the corner and...." Both Tony and my didn't hear anything else, our single man programming kicked in. So we escorted these girls back to their hotel, well actually we all staggered and bounced like some pinballs up the street.

We came up to this little hotel set back from the main drag, it was really looked interesting. The fun though didn't even get a chance to start, because as we staggered through the front door and the girls chaperon hit and octave and volume that I believe is reserved for emergency sirens.

Almost exact words were, "What are you girls doing with these boys! Have they touched you! Are you Drunk! OH MY GOD!" almost in the same breath. As I tried to calm this chaperon, Tony meanwhile was trying to plan a good time to go do touristy things with these girls the next day.

I explained how the girls were lost and run out of francs so we offered to pay for their dinner. Took them to dancing and walk around the little harbor. We then escorted them back home. I also told this chaperon that the same truth that we told the girls. That we were in town for the weekend and it was great to meet Americans. That calmed her down, found out that the girls were in deep kimchi for being out with out either her or one of the other 3 chaperons. Though that me and Tony were nice gentleman for escorting these girls home and she paid us a 1000 franc note (about 75 dollars) for the trouble.

We walked back to Fleet Landing and talked about how weird it was for sailors to be the gigolos and being paid for spending time with girls in a foreign port and not the typical way around.

More to come in future intallments after this commerical break. Southern and friend end up being guests of a racing team over in Monaco. Southern and friends spend a whole day on a beach in the French Riveria. Stay tuned.