Naval Deployment questions

[CadNav]

One of the best times to interact with NCMs is during any sort of damage control station. Want to demonstrate some deck plate leadership? Get to the section base quickly and start getting bunker gear on. Learn the firefighting techniques cold and lead the attack team. Don't be the guy that cowers in the corner and avoids the hard shit.

Same thing with events like storing ship, landing garbage, cleaning, deck force, etc. Get out and do some manual labour. Dont hide in your cabin avoiding the work.


You can't shit your pants.... but you can definitely piss off the bridge wing!

Attack team? Is that like there's four people with the fire and like, they wake you up at 2am for drill and like the first four people who get dressed get to do the drill? Do you get woken up a lot? Should you sleep in your uniform?

What are these events? Do they go on during your off time, or are they things to do when you (as an NWO, I guess) are not OOW?

Coward might be an extreme adjective, but shy, nervous or unsure perhaps.

I'm a kick you off the end of the dock kind of guy in those scenarios. Be aggressive and go fuck things up so you learn how to do it right.

Well, I'm certaintly going to try. That's probably the biggest thing I have to work on... or I found, at least, during my DP1; if that was a training problem (it was only 6 weeks) or an operator problem, I don't know but I assume both... I really want to do well and instill confidence in my subordinates and all that... I'm not very experienced but I've been in long enough to see what happen when people don't do their jobs, and this is a very high stakes job...

I really like math and I love theory and strategy and decision making and all those things, or the little bit of theory I learnt in my small time in anyways, but I think I'm going to do well, I certaintly hope, anyways...

 

[Lumber]

Learn fractions! And simple multiplication.

Also, the Navy uses it's own system of measurements. So all that garbage you learned in school with regard to the metric system is useless

Nautical Miles = Approx 2000 yards or 10 cables
Cables = Approx 200 yards = 1 cable
Yards
Feet

Shackle = 1 length of anchor chain = Approx 90 feet

I say approx because everything in the Navy is an approximation . Which brings me to my next favorite word: "Interpolation"

Interpolation = estimates unknown values that fall between two or more known data points, filling in the blanks.

A lot of people get hung up on trying to be extremely precise and end up losing the plot trying to find the perfect solution to something. 99% percent of the time the 70% percent solution early is better than the 100% solution late. "Is it 10 cables or 8 cables you're going to be displaced by the vessel you're passing?" Who knows and who actually gives a flying #$%^ .

One of the downsides of learning to drive a ship in a place like Canada is everyone is orderly and follows the rules. You'll then go to third world shitholes and do transits in to lovely places like Jakarta where their are a bazillion ships and vessels and nobody gives a rats ass about the rules. Just drive with your eyes and don't crash in to anything!

Don't forget to mention the plethora of different measurement units they use:
Ship's draft, breadth, and width: meters
Ship's height and aircraft altitude: feet
Water depth: meters unless you are working with Americans, then fathoms
Distances: nautical miles, cables, and yards
Distance for Harpoon control system: Data Miles
Towed array cable scope: feet
Dealing with anything technical: kilometres and meters

 

[Lumber]

Attack team? Is that like there's four people with the fire and like, they wake you up at 2am for drill and like the first four people who get dressed get to do the drill? Do you get woken up a lot? Should you sleep in your uniform?

That's exactly what it is. There are 3-4 "section bases" on the ship where off watch personnel close up and standby to fight fires and floods. The first 4 get dressed in firefighting gear and will be the first ones to attack a fire if needed.

They usually do drills in early morning (like 5 or 6 am) or in the later evening (7-9pm) but a "fire exercise" in the middle of the night is possible.

No, absolutely do NOT sleep in your uniform. Some people do, and it's stupid in my opinion. Just learn to get dressed quickly and you'll have a much better sleep not being in your uniform. The minimum standard time for everyone to get to their stations after the emergency alarms sounds already factors in the time needed to get dressed.

Well, I'm certaintly going to try. That's probably the biggest thing I have to work on... or I found, at least, during my DP1; if that was a training problem (it was only 6 weeks) or an operator problem, I don't know but I assume both... I really want to do well and instill confidence in my subordinates and all that... I'm not very experienced but I've been in long enough to see what happen when people don't do their jobs, and this is a very high stakes job...

I really like math and I love theory and strategy and decision making and all those things, or the little bit of theory I learnt in my small time in anyways, but I think I'm going to do well, I certaintly hope, anyways...

If you really want to shine, sign up for the Ships Team Diver course. You get street cred for being a diver, it will sometimes get you out of the less pleasant extra activities, and you will also be one of the ship's "rescue swimmers". As a rescue swimmer, you go in the zodiac during a man overboard. When the alarm sounds for a man overboard, all the divers show up on the boat deck, and the first one to get there gets dressed in a dry suit and goes in the boat. Since officers cabins are closer to the boat deck, the officers are often the first ones there and get to go in the boat. I say "get to", but I would be lying if I said that I was never scared doing it. I've gone in the boat in some stupidly rough seas. Not only was losing sight of the ship behind a huge wave unnerving, but it was also super stressful trying to hook up the zodiac to the crane for recovery when the zodiac is going up and down 10ft as waves roll through.

 

[CadNav]

That's exactly what it is. There are 3-4 "section bases" on the ship where off watch personnel close up and standby to fight fires and floods. The first 4 get dressed in firefighting gear and will be the first ones to attack a fire if needed.

They usually do drills in early morning (like 5 or 6 am) or in the later evening (7-9pm) but a "fire exercise" in the middle of the night is possible.

No, absolutely do NOT sleep in your uniform. Some people do, and it's stupid in my opinion. Just learn to get dressed quickly and you'll have a much better sleep not being in your uniform. The minimum standard time for everyone to get to their stations after the emergency alarms sounds already factors in the time needed to get dressed.


If you really want to shine, sign up for the Ships Team Diver course. You get street cred for being a diver, it will sometimes get you out of the less pleasant extra activities, and you will also be one of the ship's "rescue swimmers". As a rescue swimmer, you go in the zodiac during a man overboard. When the alarm sounds for a man overboard, all the divers show up on the boat deck, and the first one to get there gets dressed in a dry suit and goes in the boat. Since officers cabins are closer to the boat deck, the officers are often the first ones there and get to go in the boat. I say "get to", but I would be lying if I said that I was never scared doing it. I've gone in the boat in some stupidly rough seas. Not only was losing sight of the ship behind a huge wave unnerving, but it was also super stressful trying to hook up the zodiac to the crane for recovery when the zodiac is going up and down 10ft as waves roll through.

I find my uniform comfortable enough so I started to wear it on course because they started waking us up 5-6 times a night and I didn't wanna bother...

I'm going to be honest, that sounds pretty scary but it's a good qual to have, I guess... I do wanna try out subs though, but I'll have to think about it more because I don't know a lot about it. My dad was subs and he said it was alright... all I know is that on subs the professionalism goes up because everyone is volunteer... that's what he said, anyways

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

That's exactly what it is. There are 3-4 "section bases" on the ship where off watch personnel close up and standby to fight fires and floods. The first 4 get dressed in firefighting gear and will be the first ones to attack a fire if needed.

They usually do drills in early morning (like 5 or 6 am) or in the later evening (7-9pm) but a "fire exercise" in the middle of the night is possible.

No, absolutely do NOT sleep in your uniform. Some people do, and it's stupid in my opinion. Just learn to get dressed quickly and you'll have a much better sleep not being in your uniform. The minimum standard time for everyone to get to their stations after the emergency alarms sounds already factors in the time needed to get dressed.

Yah don't sleep in your uniform, you'll smell like shit and nobody likes a smelly cabin mate!

If you really want to shine, sign up for the Ships Team Diver course. You get street cred for being a diver, it will sometimes get you out of the less pleasant extra activities, and you will also be one of the ship's "rescue swimmers". As a rescue swimmer, you go in the zodiac during a man overboard. When the alarm sounds for a man overboard, all the divers show up on the boat deck, and the first one to get there gets dressed in a dry suit and goes in the boat. Since officers cabins are closer to the boat deck, the officers are often the first ones there and get to go in the boat. I say "get to", but I would be lying if I said that I was never scared doing it. I've gone in the boat in some stupidly rough seas. Not only was losing sight of the ship behind a huge wave unnerving, but it was also super stressful trying to hook up the zodiac to the crane for recovery when the zodiac is going up and down 10ft as waves roll through.

Yah boat ops in rough seas suck a lot. I did a boarding in the Gulf of Oman at night in really bad seas and I would be lying if I said I wasn't shitting myself a bit thinking about going in the drink trying to climb up and down the ladder with all my gear on.

Then there was having to get on and off the suspect Dhow which was an adventure in and of itself. I got aboard first and we had trouble sticking so I ended up with myself and one other fellow onboard at night for what seemed like an eternity with about a dozen scruffy looking Iranian chaps, while the boat repositioned itself for another approach.

Tucked ourselves inside the breezeway, pointed the pistol at a few blokes and told them to get away from me . Worked like a charm!

Don't forget to mention the plethora of different measurement units they use:
Ship's draft, breadth, and width: meters
Ship's height and aircraft altitude: feet
Water depth: meters unless you are working with Americans, then fathoms
Distances: nautical miles, cables, and yards
Distance for Harpoon control system: Data Miles
Towed array cable scope: feet
Dealing with anything technical: kilometres and meters

I didn't want to overwhelm and dissuade the lad too much!

 

[Lumber]

Yah boat ops in rough seas suck a lot. I did a boarding in the Gulf of Oman at night in really bad seas and I would be lying if I said I wasn't shitting myself a bit thinking about going in the drink trying to climb up and down the ladder with all my gear on.

Then there was having to get on and off the suspect Dhow which was an adventure in and of itself. I got aboard first and we had trouble sticking so I ended up with myself and one other fellow onboard at night for what seemed like an eternity with about a dozen scruffy looking Iranian chaps, while the boat repositioned itself for another approach.

Tucked ourselves inside the breezeway, pointed the pistol at a few blokes and told them to get away from me . Worked like a charm!

I remember we were doing a boarding in the GOO at the beginning of monsoon season. It was so rough (relative to the size of the Dhow) that the Dhow looked like a cork bobbing in a wave pool. Three of the members of the first wave had to come back due to sea sickness. I remember watching one of them get billy-pugh'd back aboard because they didn't have the strength to climb the ladder, and the whole ride he was just puking non stop.

Good times...