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

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Most ships have wifi on them nowadays.

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I got out in 2012. This is news to me, and I worked in the IT department.

Our shifts were 12 on and 12 off. I'd work from 7pm-7am (although it was more like 6-8), eat breakfast, work out, shower, sleep, and do it again. Being out to sea was like Groundhog Day

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I personally did not get a lot of sleep underway.

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If you were a coner I'm going to slap the shite out of you.


The answer to the OP's question is masturbation... lots and lots of masturbation.

Yeah... we would have to go 6 on 6 off on duty days and have duty every other day if we weren't in homeport. I've mentioned it before on TD, but my sub had a bit of a morale problem and was criminally undermanned. I saw greater than 3 section duty once in 4 years on board.

And like I said, we never REALLY had 12 hours off. Most hours of those 12 hours were filled with training, drills, and maintenance.

Target Navy>>>>Sub Navy

2 subs... both 3 section duty in port and stood at least 2 watches.

1 sub tender (surface ship)... 6 section duty in port and stood 1 watch (several times I didn't have watch at all).

I lol when surface guys complain about standing watch.

I was in from 93-99, on CG-58 from 95-99. Underway was a 4 man rotation on watch, 8 hour shift. Get some work done in between, watched movies and played play station. When shite broke, you were up until repairs were made. My longest stretch was pushing 48 hrs.
Underway replenishment was about every 3 or 4 days when on deployment. I was on the line handling team for that as well as mooring lines.
Kind of crazy, but my longest underway period without a port visit was only 15 or 16 days.

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Topside watch in January in Groton was the worst.

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I stood all my topside watches in Kings Bay fighting mosquitoes and sand gnats. We'd pass the time on midwatches by throwing the shipyard bubba's bicycles in the water.

By the time I made it to Groton on my 2nd boat I had enough rank where I was duty section leader and writing the watchbills. It's nice always standing belowdecks in the middle of the day.

But it sucks when you get woke up in the middle of the night because some shitbag didn't relieve the watch on time.

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Kind of crazy, but my longest underway period without a port visit was only 15 or 16 days.

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My longest underweigh period without seeing the sun was 108 days

GTFO

Army, Navy, Marines: People who actually want to serve their country

Air Force: People who want to say they served their country

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deciding after an 18hr day if I'm going to shower and get 5 hours of sleep, or skip it and get 5.5.

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So you were on a 24 hr day? What were you doing on a surface ship that had you working 18 hrs a day?

Our days were 18 hour days underway (normally). I'd stand 6 on, spend the next 6 doing maintenance and paperwork (I was DCPO and ran 3M for the largest workcenter on board), then try to get 6 off before next watch.

Plenty of times I was port and starboard AMR watch. If we were p&s then we could generally run our watches however we wanted. Most of the time we'd do 8 on/8 off and tweek it to work around stuff like field day, training, etc where we'd both have to be awake.

I did that for about 6 years straight... back to back subs. Then I went to a surface ship (repair department on a sub tender). I was a planner and stood 6 section duty in port and had no duty section at all at sea. At sea I went to my office at 8am and left around 3pm. It was AHHH-MAZING.