re: Navy guys: how do you fill your down time?

Gtg

All the men in my family have served. I guess my boys are next also.

Sounds like my younger brother. He did 10 years in the Navy on a ship mostly. Everyone of us told him to stay in another 10 years and get his retirement. Nope dummy got out I got him a very good job with me out here stays 2 years here then heads back to Louisiana for a supposedly great job. Fast forward to now layed off 3 times and going in and out to sea on a oil platform now.

Terd was on submarines we all know what went on under the sea.
:(

Thanks for your service

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ScrapPack

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I was on CVN-72, Lincoln

Were you a nuke MM or conventional?

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Don't know why, but I always figured that when we weren't at war most of the people on a ship worked a normal-ish workday/workweek.

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Every job is different. Earlier in this thread, I saw an airwing guy say they were always going and he is right. Seems like they were always doing flight ops on the Roosevelt. Most engineering space guys like MM's, EM's, ET's had pretty hectic schedules. 5 hours on 10 hours off was usually the norm for watch schedule (taking logs, operating machinery). and that did not include your normal work day. Sometimes when we did not have enough guys quallified, and we did 6 and 6 which was absolutely terrible.

There's a reason Navy boys are called seamen (semen)

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When your at sea for months at a time what do you do to keep yourself occupied during your off time? How much, during a routine day/week do you have?

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Depends on your job. If you are a supply guy pretty much work 7-4 and can watch movies on hard drives, work out, and get plenty of sleep.

If you have a job that involves standing watches it depends on how many qualified watch standers you have. If only enough for 2 sections you are 6 on 6 off on watch, while also working any time between 7-4. So you could have midnight to 6am watch, work 7 to noon, then have watch noon to 6pm. Then you essentially have 6 non working hours to decide if you want to eat, sleep, or workout before midnight watch. If you want to do all of the above you are running on 3hrs sleep all week. No time to worry about movies.
This is Monday through Saturday, then Sunday you only work 12 hours (watch hours). Shitty life

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I'd imagine that today you can get on the internet, Skype home, watch movies and such

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Not really. Internet is terrible (like worse than dial-up), and there are limited computers per division. You can watch DVD or hard drive movies if you have time (a lot don't). You can make calls but there are limited phones and a noticeable delay, not to mention time differences. They have navy television (for sports and such), if the ship is heading in the correct direction you can get a shitty picture

When I would watch LSU games it would normally be on WatchESPN.com waiting for a description of the last 3 plays to load up, at 3am, in a jacket because the room with our computer was cold for equipments sake. I would also be going 40+ hours without sleep as I'd trade watches because I needed my 6hr off window to be during the game.



^ All of this is based off of a deployed destroyer. Aircraft carriers had it better, subs likely worse.

TBH there wasn't much downtime on a sub even on deployment (at least for us guys back aft operating the reactor). Sub days are split into 3 shifts of 6 hours. 6 hours of watch, 6 hours or maintenance and training, and 6 hours of sleep. It NEVER worked out that way.

We had so much maintenance and training during sleep time, and constant running of drills (simulated drills while on deployment) that resulted in the entire ENG department being awake for upwards of 36 hours on the regular.

Most of us did bring a laptop for movies and such, also if you weren't fully qualified all of your time was spent trying to qualify for your dolphins and several watchstations.

We had 2 60" TVs in the Crew's Mess with Playstation and XBOX so that was alright I guess.