I agree 100% and I have also wondered if that has any effect. I was a letter writing machine at sea (if you didn’t write any letters...you didn’t get any letters)
I have also assumed that it would be strictly and completely verboten to have a laptop, tablet, or phone on any kind of watch, no matter what (unless it was some desk watch in a building while ashore or something) but I don’t know anything about that.
I wonder if some other Freepers who have more recent experience could enlighten us.
There also seems to be unverified statements going around that Navy ships at sea no longer have exterior deck watch lookouts, and I simply refuse 100% to believe that unless someone can verify that with evidence. But that is the nature of the Internet now, people are repeating that, without evidence, in a number of threads.
On a lighter side, how I remember buying those rolls of quarters...and the “dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...dink dink...” as you entered them in, all the while there might be someone on the other end going “Hello? Hello! Hello?”
Hehehehe...then in the middle of the discussion the recording “Please add another dollar twenty five to continue the conversation...”
Don’t miss that. You know what I do miss, though? Wanting to be home so bad I could taste it! Actually, not the actually wanting to be home, but the way the anticipation racked up the experience so far, you couldn’t help but have fun. I just talked to someone recently who said that when I came home, nobody slept for the entire time I was home, because I wouldn’t let them!
Actually, I think the Fitzgerald had left her home port (Yokosuka) around midnight and was heading to the southwest to Subic Bay...but I might be remembering that incorrectly.