....just another....(yawn...) 0200 watch in a dark, cold, quiet room trying to stay awake. The ship's operation tempo or optemp as us acronym and abbreviation masters like to call it, has always been a topic of complaint and one of the toughest parts to acclimate to underway. It provides long working hours and little sleep or rest. I will try to paint a picture for you. The way I see it is like two schedules running parallel to each other. You have the normal work center/ship activity like equipment maintenance, underway replenishments (an unrep is how we receive supplies at sea), general training, drills, flight operations, exercises with other ships, and boat operations....the list could be endless. Typically this is from 0700-2200. Running along side this we have a 24 hour watch rotation. Watch is a 4-5 hour time frame in which you are responsible for a certain warfare area. You may be monitoring alarms, radar, equipment, cameras...ect. The 24 hour watch rotation couldn't care less if you just spent 12 hours doing maintenance and the 4 hours before that on watch. If you have the next watch you stand it. This is why I complain that I am so tired all the time. On average we might sleep 5 hours a day (I should mention this may not be all at one time also). Good news though! Since being underway the rotation has changed a bit. We are now on what is known as circadian rhythm. It's a rotation that studies have shown to be the most effective in vigilant watch standing. Instead of 5 hour time blocks that may move throughout your days, we have 3 hour set watches 2x per day. On top of that, we muster daily at 0900 instead of 0700. This has been a huge relief. It is now easier to schedule regular maintenance and daily work center tasks and for those who need it, we get an extra couple hours rest or time to work out or study. Most of the ship participates in this, however there are a few watch stations that do not have enough qualified people so they miss out on this (my watch being one of them....boooo!!!)
Now, if we can just get rid of all the bells and whistles life would be grand! Yes, those pesky Bluetooth stations, wife hotspots, hot tubs....oh wait, that's not what I mean when I say bells and whistles. I mean literal bells and whistles. Bells are rung on the hour and half hour over the ship's intercom system (1MC). The number of bells reflects the time of day. Those aren't the worst thing passed on the 1MC. The whistle blasts.....the whistles blasts are the worst! Piercing screech of whistles at the beginning of ever major evolution and meal time. Thank the Lord they stopped doing it in the morning for wake up (reveille). Think of the worst alarm ever and never being able to turn it off or hit snooze.
Overall, the changes we've made have been really good and we are off to a great start this underway.
Thank you, as always, for your extra prayers and thoughts. Please keep Zach in mind also. He is still in HI taking care of the pups and coping with becoming a bachelor for a while.
Navy slang: Hamsters; chicken cordon bleu, processed and frozen from a bag. " What's for dinner? Hamsters and rice."
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