Posted on 08/22/2017 11:24:02 AM PDT by nickcarraway
I double-handed a 41' sailboat across the Pacific 6 on, 6 off for the entire voyage and it lasted a lot longer than a couple of weeks.
Would that count?
Sailing shorthanded keeps you busy every minute - Sailing is not like steering a power boat.
And keeping a good 24 hour watch in between everything else is vital.
“””According to the article, it’s 20% deployment. One 7 month in 36 months. Or, if I understand it correctly, 29 months not deployed and 7 deployed over a span of 3 years. Doesn’t sound exhausting to me.”””
And on the other hand the sailors on these container ships and tankers colliding with the Navy ships are typically 10 months on the ship and 2 months vacation. So in three years a merchant mariner is at sea 30 months and at home 6 months. That is pretty much the opposite of a US Navy sailor.
That was critical on my son’s sub. He is a nuke and got out as soon as he could. He described 100+ hour weeks as a matter of course. People actually falling asleep on their feet. A CO who devised make-work. Of course, my boy hated him. The successor was better.
When he told me that I was gobstruck by the total idiocy and danger of this practice.
Sailor train, repair and have other duties on top of the at sea watch duties. It is not just a job, it's 5 jobs.
The merchants don’t have anything to do at sea but sleep and get high for the most part.
It’s far different than the pace of a warship.
CO: Sailor - that 80,000 ton vessel that has a radar profile like an aircraft hangar is lit-up like a las vegas whorehouse - at 10,000 meters. Take evasive action.
Sailor: Sir, I can’t see it!
CO: Sailor. What are you talking about?!
Sailor: I’m too tired!
Nope. I was on an aircraft carrier with a working squadron.
Not much sleep.
Speaking of chow - the beans on toast for breakfast was something you don't forget!
Overwork as I described above was so bad that my son’s sub had a actual suicide watch for exhausted sailors. Morale was on the floor because of the 100+ hours per week.
Your remark seems to ignore the actual impact of the deployments which you try to minimize. For every soldier in the field there are 2-4 people in the supply chain and logistics. Then you have the psychological impact on the soldiers and their families. And it does not stop after discharge.
I love the part when, after chasing a Soviet SSBN for 3 weeks and finally the ship gets relieved on station, the needle guns start up. “Relax from quiet ship” means make enough noise to raise the dead. No real sleep for weeks and some deck ape is firing up a needle gun 10 feet from you.
My son was so depressed by the unnecessary overwork that I feared for his mental health. My respect for him for his survival of Power School and the rest of his hitch is very high.
I can relate...partying hearty in Olongapo or Subic City until the wee hours of the morning exhausted me!
I don’t believe anyone would make the case, at least no rational person, that fatigue was the proximate cause of the failure to avoid the collisions.
That fault is more properly ascribed to abject incompetence. Likely due to affirmative action.
Don’t they just sit in deck chairs and drink Daiquiris?
“Relax from quiet ship”
You may now float the #2 diesel in your coffee.
How could the military escape the cultural rot all around it?
Trump will or has put a stop to some of the crap that infuriates all of us.
LOL, the “needle guns”...
I suppose that as bad or worse than the ‘dink dink dink dink’ of the chipping hammers! I never had to use them (being an airedale) but I heard them!
“The bells...the bells...”
I guess that is the problem, isn’t it. The cultural rot can’t help but infect the military.
I just cannot bring myself to believe it can’t be undone, because if it can’t...we are going to get our asses handed to us in a shooting war.
I can’t face that reality at this time.
No it would not be collapse or surrender. Anyone believing this war can be won with a big battle is a fool. All that can happen is to turn the ship of state as it can be turned -very slowly. It has taken a century to get to where we are and will take decades to beat back the nihilists.
A job most likely given to the seaman with the worst hangover from the night before...
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