Land Lover's Guide to Sea - Part 2

Hello again boys and girls.  It’s time for lesson 2 of “Dummies Guide to Life at Sea,” a brief overview of what your sailors and soldiers experience underway.  At the end of Lesson 1, I just finished my morning micro-dermabrasion in the shower and was up and ready for another fine Navy day.

The first thing I do in the morning is head to chow.  You see, on the ship you don’t really have much of a choice as to when or what you eat.  I can have a hot meal from 0700-0800, 1130-1230 and 1700-1800.  If I’m awake at midnight, I can eat at mid-rats. Mid-rats is navy lingo for midnight rations, or leftovers.  If I thoroughly enjoyed lunch or dinner, odds are good I’ll see it again at mid-rats. 

Now, shipboard chow has really improved over the past few years and the dining experience is quite fine in the Chief’s mess so for this lesson, we will go back to 1999. I was a 2^nd Class Petty Officer on a Spruance Class Destroyer.  Actually, I was on 3 separate destroyers between 98-99 but the chow was pretty much the same on all three. 

When a ship first gets underway, the food really isn’t bad.  There’s variety, a full stock of condiments and the fresh fruits and vegetables are actually fresh.  After a couple of months, that all deteriorates; rapidly.  The less often you pull into port, the worse things get.  If you can’t take on stores ashore, you have to do a replenishment at sea (RAS).  During a RAS, you can take on fuel, dry goods and a variety of food.  You get this stuff from a supply ship; imagine a floating Sam’s Club and you get the general idea. 

A RAS can help keep your ship stocked in basic goods; toilet paper, cleaners, geedunk (junk food for the ship’s store), meats, condiments and the ever popular fresh fruits and vegetables.  The problem with this is that you are getting your fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as other perishable items, from another ship that’s out to sea.  This supply ship idea is pretty great but they don’t exactly milk cows and tend garden while they’re out to sea.  That means that your perishables are only as fresh as their last day in port. 

So, the longer you are away from shore, the stronger your chances of finding that white, “pre-mold” around the crust of your bread, wilted lettuce on the salad bar and, my personal favorite, tomatoes that were previously frozen and then thawed out.  Have you ever tried that?  If you’re not expecting it, it’s kind of like stepping into a pile of pet vomit in the middle of the night.  You know what I’m talking about; you’re half-asleep just trying to get to the bathroom and back to bed when suddenly, you realize something isn’t quite right with the world.  Your feel the goo on the bottom of your foot and immediately recoil in disgust as you come to the conscious realm and realize what just happened. 

On the ship, in the matter of a week, you can go from enjoying a healthy meal with a robust salad bar to using salad dressing on your ham sandwich with a side of pickle and cheese salad for good measure.  I never ate omelets until I joined the Navy.  I never cared much for eggs, but at breakfast that’s your best bet for something fresh.  Most mess decks offered scrambled eggs on the line, but they may be powdered and who willingly eats powdered eggs?  If you get an omelet cooked to order, they will pile on all the cheese you want and cheese makes anything edible.  If you want something to drink with your meal, there’s always plenty of bug juice available.  Bug juice comes in a variety of colors but it’s pretty much all the same.  If you want to make some of your own, go to the dollar store and buy the fake Kool-Aid.  Then, read the directions on the packet.  If it says add one packet to a quart of water; add three.  I’m not sure why they call it bug juice, I always imagined it was because the stuff is so sweet that even a fly knows it will get diabetes if it goes near the stuff.

Now, let me share with you the actual task of eating on a ship.  Being out to sea will make you incredibly hungry.  I’m not sure why; it could be all the walking you do aboard ship, the boredom of being out sea or Pavlov’s theory in action.  It only takes a day or two on the regimented eating schedule for your body to know it’s next scheduled feeding time.  In anticipation of eating this almost wonderful meal, sailors start lining up about 15 minutes early to be the first to see what exciting culinary treats are waiting for them.  Once you get through the line and up to the food, you usually get a choice of main course and sides.  Sometimes the food is immediately recognizable and sometimes you have to ask for clarifying information.  Some days it’s like being on a game show,  “Guess that entree!”  “Bob, what do we have for our contestants today?”

Once you pick from the menu and the Food Service Assistants slop it on your tray, it’s over to the self-service salad, condiment and drink stations.  The quality of all three are directly related to your time at sea and the competency of your ship’s supply department.  A good supply department will manage their funds and order the right stuff at the right time.  A bad supply department won’t.  If you have a bad Supply Officer or Chief, you may very well not have a salad or condiment bar.

Now to the act of eating itself; tables on the mess decks are fastened to the floor.  The chairs are attached to the table and swing out on an arm so you can swivel out a chair, sit in it and swivel back to the table.  Your food is in a tray and your drink in a cup.  Right about at this time, something strange happens; the waves magically grow and the ship starts bouncing all over the place.  Now, remember you’re in a chair that swivels so just staying stationary becomes a challenge.  Add to that the tray your food is on; it slides.  You eat with your feet planted firmly on the floor, your elbows stuck to the table and cradling your tray in hopes of keeping it from crashing on the floor.  You also have to keep a stronghold on your cup, which is full of the aforementioned bug juice.  That leaves you with one free wrist and hand to scoop up your food and shovel it into you mouth.  If either elbow lifts too far off your tray and the table, disaster can ensue.  So instead, you bring your head down and quite literally shovel the fork into your mouth. 

On most days, you have to get back to work or on to watch so your meal is a quick one.  That ends this short lesson.  Stay tuned for the next lesson as I am sure it will be a good one.

Land Lover's Guide to Life at Sea

Hello all, 

 If anyone out there in cyberspace is still following this blog, then I guess you know by now I'm back home.  I came across some of my old writings when I fired up my PowerBook for the first time in a few years.  I wrote the below (and the next few that will follow) I think in 2008 when I was taking part in UNITAS, an exercise that takes part between the US and 11 other partnering South American navies.  I don't think I have ever share this..except maybe via email to my family.  If you ever wondered what the experience is like on a US Navy vessel, keep reading:

So, it’s my 4^th day at sea and I only worked 15 hours today; it’s Sunday and that means “holiday routine.”  On Sundays, the “holiday routine” fairy brings us an extra hour of sleep.  Reveille is at 7am. 

I would like to explain shipboard life to my non-seafaring friends and it’s only befitting that I start with the concept of reveille.  I have it on good authority that “reveille” is Latin for “wake your ass up and get to work.”  Onboard ship, there’s an entire procedure to calling reveille.  It begins with sailors sleeping soundly in their racks, white sandy beaches, frosty mugs of beer and images of their lads or lasses back home dancing in their heads.  Those dreams come to a screeching halt at the sound of whistles through the ship’s loudspeaker system (1MC).  Imagine what a dog’s whistle must sound like to a dog.  Now change the pitch just enough until it actually comes into the human range of hearing; that’s a boatswain’s pipe early in the morning.  If that didn’t wake you up, the watch captain tells you that it’s time to get up and get your ass to work; except he’s a bit more professional about it that I’m being.  Then comes the boatswain’s pipe again.  By this time, you are ready to tie yourself to a heavy object and heave yourself overboard just to get some peace, but on the USS Mesa Verde (the Mighty Mesa) they want to ensure you don’t fall back into dreamland.  Here, they go the extra mile and play a song for you at top volume.  I can’t remember a single song they have played so far; I was too busy curling tightly in the fetal position crying for my mother to notice the catchy tune.

Once you get over the shock of the cold, cruel world and wipe the crust from your eyes, it’s time for a shower.  Now, I have to take a moment to acknowledge my good fortune and tell you all that I really did get lucky on this deployment.  The Mesa Verde is a new ship, she was commissioned in 2007 and the senior enlisted here have state rooms instead of general berthing.  The junior enlisted are in general berthing and live in a space with way too many of their closest friends.  Even on most other ships, the Chiefs would be in Chiefs’ berthing and share a space with the other Chiefs on board.  As it is here, I am in a stateroom and share my space with only one other person.  I have the bottom bunk and she has the top; it’s just like summer camp, but not.  The staterooms on this ship each have a private bath.  The bathroom walls are completely metal;  I imagine myself a sardine in the little roll up can.  Half of the room is a shower and the other half is the toilet.  There’s a door that separates the toilet half from the shower half. I guess this is just in case I want to pee 5 inches from my roommate while she’s in the shower.  Maybe that’s a fetish I don’t yet know about.  At any rate, the toilet half of the room is small; I mean smaller than you are currently imagining.  A port-a-potty is spacious compared to this thing, and it uses the latest in motion sensor and vacuum technology.  If I sneeze, the motion sensor notices the flinch in my butt muscles and the vacuum opens in an attempt to suck me into sewage hell.  I half expect to see video on “World’s Funniest Bloopers” one day of unsuspecting sailors trying to escape the wrath of the mechanized toilet.  Now to the shower; it’s not any roomier than the toilet but it doesn’t try eat me, so it’s cool.  The shower spigot is about the size of a dime and the water either drips out or comes through at pressure washer speed.  On the ship, water is a valuable commodity. I don’t quite understand the whole process, but they don’t just take the water from the ocean and dump it on us.  This is a good thing, but it does mean there isn’t always a limitless supply and the idea is to get in the shower, get clean and get out of the shower.  That’s not really a problem for me since I don’t enjoy having my skin blasted with water at a pressure high enough to clean my garage floor.  So, I’m up and out and ready for my day in a quick minute.  That’s where I end this lesson.

Stay tuned for future installments where I discuss the ship’s strict dietary and exercise plans, exciting décor and other reasons for you appreciate the guys out here who do this for a living.