Turbo

These past few weeks have been incomprehensible. I offer this as my excuse for not posting recently. I have barely been able to process all that has been happening in my life, so the idea of trying to write it all down has been daunting to say the least. However, over the last few days I have been able to feel myself beginning to hit a stride of sorts, so I have decided to make an attempt at posting.

I have been adjusting to a new city, job, schedule, budget, mindset and vocabulary. I hope to talk about all of these things in future posts. For today I will focus on one: the new vocabulary. Over the past few weeks I have learned an entirely new language. The Navy (like any large organization) has its own lexicon which is mostly gibberish to anyone outside of the organization who hears it. Up until I got here three weeks ago, I had never heard many of the terms which I use every day now. And even now I have a hard time understanding most of the things people say to me, although my ear is getting better every day.

My intention for this post is to introduce you all to a few of the terms you will see in any future posts where I discuss my job. I won’t get into the tedium of nautical lingo (“brow”, “quarterdeck”, “leeward”, “abaft”, “focsle”.) Nor will I attempt to acquaint you with the even more tedious engineering l33tspeak which has been the bane of my brief existence on board this ship (“transverse bulkhead”, “EOSS”, “Ultra-S”, “Gas Turbine Module”, “N2 LPAC”, “PMS” [means something different in the Navy.]) I will stick to the essential terms which describe what I do for a living. Hopefully, in the course explaining the terms which are coming to define my new life here, I’ll also be able to convey a sense of what my day-to-day life is. I won’t promise that this will not be a little bit tedious, but please bear with me. If you read this, you will understand me so much better later on.

“Duty Day:”

I am starting with this term because it explains why I am writing this post right now. Basically, there always have to be enough people on the ship to take her to sea and operate her systems. That way if the redcoats, communists or Mongolian hordes attack the naval base, there will always be enough people to get the ship moving out to sea and defend herself. Therefore, the ship has to keep a minimum compliment of people onboard 24/7. This is accomplished by dividing the officers and crew of the ship up into six “duty sections.” Each duty section is responsible for staying onboard the ship for one 24-hour “duty day” every six days. During that 24-hour period, each member of the duty section is usually required to stand one 5-hour watch. When your duty day falls on a weekend, the 19 hours in which you are not on watch are your own to spend reading, playing video games, sleeping, studying or (in my case) writing blog posts. You can do anything you want except leave the ship.

When it is not your duty day, being in the navy is very much like any other job. You come to work at 7AM and leave whenever your work is done and your boss says you can go. Sometimes you get home by noon, sometimes not till 10PM. It just depends on what going on. Unless your duty day falls on a weekend, you get weekends off. Of course, on deployment all of my days will be 18-20 hours long and there wont be any days off.

“Watch”

When the ship is underway, there are no duty sections because the whole crew is onboard and on duty 24/7. Therefore, when you are underway your life revolves around the “watch schedule,” or “watch rotation.” A “watch”, in the nautical sense of the word, is basically a shift at some particular job. For example, the sailors who stand at the helm and steer the ship do so in 5-hour watches, or shifts. The watch you are assigned to stand depends on your training. The helmsmen I mentioned have to go through hours of training and hands-on instruction before they are fully qualified to stand the “helm watch” on their own. My biggest responsibility over the course of the next year is to get myself qualified to stand a watch called “Officer of the Deck” or “OOD”. I won’t get into the responsibilities of the OOD now. I will simply say that qualification is very hard to achieve. I have been told by multiple older officers that getting qualified as an OOD is harder than getting a master’s degree. The people who told me this all had master’s degrees (yeah, I asked).

For now, the only watch I am qualified to stand is called “Conning Officer.” As conning officer, I am responsible for directing the movements of the ship. I do this by giving orders to the helmsmen. These orders have to be given in a specific, standard format. For example, if I want the ship to turn right to a course that is due south, and increase speed to ten knots I might give the order “all ahead 2/3 for 10 knots, right standard rudder, steady course 270.” Every word of that order means something specific to the helmsman. I am still getting the hang of translating my intentions (turn right, go south) into “standard orders.”

Watch schedules work very much like duty schedules. The officers and crew are divided up into “watch sections” which are responsible for standing one watch every 24 hours in a regular rotation. The schedule breaks down like this:

2AM-7AM: aka the “two-to-seven”

7AM-12PM

12PM-5PM: aka “the afternoon watch”

5PM-10PM: aka the “17 to 22”

10PM-2AM: aka “the midwatch”

There are four watch sections which stand these watches in sequence. Because there are 5 watches every day and only four sections, the watch you stand each day changes. For example, if “section one” stood the two-to-seven today it would stand the midwatch tomorrow and the 17 to 22 the day after that. As you might guess, this makes it impossible to establish any kind of regular sleep schedule when you are underway. You basically just sleep when you can. I am interested to see what 7-8 months of keeping that kind of schedule will do to my body. Apparently you get used to it.

“Division Officer:”

My official job description is “Division Officer” which means I am an officer in charge of a “division.” Basically, the ship is broken down into departments, and each department is broken up into divisions. My department is called Engineering, which is divided up into four divisions: Electrical, Repair, Main Propulsion and Auxiliaries. I am the Main Propulsion Division Officer. That means I am in charge of the main engines which turn the propellers and drive the ship through the water and the generators which provide her with electricity. I own two main engine rooms, an oil analysis lab, and a gas turbine electric power plant. Overall I have 22 people who work for me. I am finding the process of learning to manage such a complex group of people and equipment to be very exciting and rewarding. It’s amazingly fun to be able to see a problem and to have the authority and the resources to address and solve it however I see fit. There is more creativity to this job than I expected. That has been one of the more pleasant surprises.

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So basically that’s what I do for a living. I stand duty, I stand watch, I study for qualifications and I run my division. Hopefully I will be able to find time in there to sleep and eat. So far I am having a blast with it.

I haven’t been able to really talk to any of you in a while, so in case you are wondering I am having a wonderful time and am very happy. Keep the posts coming! It’s the only way I can keep track of what you guys are up to!

Love,