What Do You Do On a Naval Cruise?

[OtakuLoki]

aka Break Out Your Sea Stories!



I was riffing in the chat tonight about some stuff back from my Navy days. (Yes, Taumpy I was talking about ships again. )

While we were talking The Falling Reverend mentioned chemical burns and how much they suck. Which reminded me about the fun and games that could be played with silver nitrate solutions.

In a water based solution silver nitrate is odorless, colorless, and appears to rinse off without any effect. What actually happens is that some of the chemical gets into the skin. When the chemical gets sufficient energy to react with the chloride ions in the skin, it turns dark brown/black. This usually happens after a couple hours of exposure - but if you expose the skin that has been contaminated to sunlight the burn is nearly instant.

Technically it's a chemical burn, but the vast majority of people experience no discomfort from it, and as the dead layers of skin flake away the mark disappears. But until that happens, the mark is indelible.

During the mid-watches people can do a lot of odd stuff to kill the time when they're not working the machinery in the engineering plant. One night there was a bit of an improvised water balloon fight.

The next morning one of the watch standers was coming onto the main deck for the daily muster. And right before the eyes of everyone this rather pale young man turned into a living Al Jolson impersonator.

Shortly after that the Engineer posted orders that water balloon fights were not allowed to use potentially limited availability reagents.

I hope other former squids or people who know former or present squids might speak up.

If this thread gets any traction, I'll write, later, about how on one of my ship's last cruises someone tried to take her through the McD's drive thru.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Why do you hate America?

[The Original An Gadaí]

Also, your tale of derring do offshore reminds me of this song

[OtakuLoki]

That song reminds me of this one:



Not Naval, but I think carries the proper respect for seamen.

[Zuul]

If this thread gets any traction, I'll write, later, about how on one of my ship's last cruises someone tried to take her through the McD's drive thru.

If this isn't a joke, I will squee and jump up and down.

[OtakuLoki]

If this isn't a joke, I will squee and jump up and down.

Well, the captain of the Bainbridge didn't think it was very funny.

[What Exit?]

Well I was an electrician and we had our own style of practical jokes. The meggers used to test insulation value of cables also did a great job of charging capacitors. We charged them up and left them on the deck. When someone picked it up Zapp!

I was on a carrier. One night at the start of a sea period when I was still fairly new to the boat, the various watches had a new ensign going from one end of the ship to other most of the watch looking for the elusive Gyro adjustment wrench. He visited us twice in the steering gear room.

[hamburglar]

I've only been "to sea" for one day: the dependent's day cruise on the carrier USS Constellation. The answer to "what do you do on a naval cruise" for me was "laugh your ass off when your 12 year old sister gets lost on board the ship." Also, watching an airshow which included sound-barrier-breaking was pretty awesome, and leaning my head out the holes in the bow where the anchor chain is played out was awesome/terrifying.

[OtakuLoki]

If this thread gets any traction, I'll write, later, about how on one of my ship's last cruises someone tried to take her through the McD's drive thru.

If this isn't a joke, I will squee and jump up and down.

Well, here it goes. This story, to make sense, is going to take some details about steam plant operations and ship operations. So please bear with me.

At the time of this story the Norfolk navy base had a McDonald's out near the piers, across the road that went by the seawalls in front of the piers. My ship, the USS Virginia CGN 38, was tied up next to another ship, the USS Bainbridge CGN 25. This meant that for us to get from our ship to the shore we had to cross over the other ship; something of a pain in the ass. We were pointed in, towards the sea wall.

We were getting ready to get underway for another round of Counter Narcotic Operations down in the Caribbean. Most of the crew was disgruntled because we knew it would be another cruise with little communication from home, and less chance to go ashore.

We had started up the reactors and were in the process of lighting off/warming up the enginerooms. One of the big important parts of that job is to first warm up the main turbine. The thing to remember about a turbine is that essentially it's a series of metal blades arranged in stages, that get blown like a pinwheel to transfer energy to the propeller. The tolerances in the turbine are very close, we're talking thousandths of an inch. Because of the speed at which the turbine turns, you don't want the blades touching the housing. Bad things^TM happen, then.

Because of that, we had to carefully and slowly bring the turbine up to its normal operating temperature. And once it was there, we had to slowly spin it, so that the rotor wouldn't bend under its own weight.

Because we were still attached to the pier when spinning the turbine we didn't want to actually put any way on the ship: that is we weren't trying to make the ship move, just turn the turbine over once or twice - which when that motion was put through the reduction gears would translate to turning the shaft maybe a quarter turn. Or less.

Because of the desire to keep from putting any way on the ship, when spinning the turbine, what the guy at the throttles was supposed to do was to watch, through a series of mirrors, the shaft going from the reduction gears to the propeller. The shaft was candy striped, so motion would be easily noted. But the mirrors were a pain to look at. In the end you were squinting at about a 4 x 6 in mirror reflected by two other mirrors. You could see the shaft, and especially when it began turning, but it was a strain.

And there was a cheat on the throttle panel.

There was a gauge on the panel that used an electric indicator to mark shaft revolutions. Officially it wasn't to be trusted while spinning the turbines, for a number of reasons, but a lot of the throttlemen watchstanders would check that in time with checking the shaft image, and once they had motion indicated by either method would shut the throttle valve.

That morning we had someone standing an under-instruction watch. He was getting practical experience doing the watch, while officially being supervised by someone who knew what he was doing. So, the officer in charge told him to spin the turbine. And the guy started opening up the ahead throttle valve.

While looking only at the electric shaft speed indicator.

He opened the throttle valve a little. And saw no response. So he opened it a little more. As I heard the story, the guy who was supposed to be supervising was back making sure the logs were up to date. The guy at the valve still didn't see any movement on the gauge, and so he opened the throttle a little more. And a little more. And a little more.

I'm sure everyone reading this has experienced hearing flow noise as water goes through a valve they've just opened. When you're talking about the kitchen sink valves, you feel it more as a small vibration, rather than hearing it. When we're talking about a six to eight inch pipe carrying steam at five hundred pounds pressure, when you start getting a lot of flow, the flow noise gets really loud.

It was about when everyone in the engineroom control space realized they were hearing much more flow noise than they expected that the official throttleman realized that the valves were still being opened by his UI watchstander. He jumped forward and spun the throttle valve shut. And only then did he take a look at some of the other indicators on the throttle panel. I'll get back to this in a moment.

By the time that the throttle was being slammed shut, it was too late, even though the ship hadn't started to move. With the throttle shut the turbine was still spinning up from the steam that had been let in, and it was going to take a few seconds for that steam to go through those pinwheel blades I mentioned. The ship started to lurch forward.

I was off-watch that morning, having pulled one of the mid-watches that night. I was sleeping in my rack, when I felt the ship lurch forward. I woke up enough to hear the captain sputtering on the main announcing circuit, waited for any other signs of a disaster I had to care about, and then went back to sleep. Things were considerably more interesting for other people on the ship, and especially around it.

At the foot of the pier, just to one side, there was a row of pay phones. Back in the days before cellphones.... :wink There had been a steady string of crewmembers using those for one last "Love ya, honey," for the next six to eight weeks. Or longer. Communications on these cruises sucked. (I'll not get into how the recent consolidation of all military mail services into one unified post office kept screwing up our mail.) I had a friend who was on the foredeck that morning, and was watching the seawall come a lot closer than he'd ever wanted to see it from the seaward side. At that, he still had the better view: He was looking down at things from a fairly safe vantage point. The guys in the phonebooths were looking up at their ship coming right at them, right at their level.

Well, the good news is that the ship didn't hit the seawall. The ropes used to tie ships to piers have the ability to stretch. It's possible to stretch them until they snap - at which point they can be deadly - but that didn't happen here. They act as a sort of spring set to keep a ship from doing damage to itself while wind, waves, tide, and UI watchstanders have their ways with them. Since we were tied up outboard another ship, we even had two of these spring sets to absorb the energy that was trying to move our ship. We pulled forward to the limits of our lines, then pulled the Bainbridge forward, then we snapped back, while the Bainbridge was still going forward, etc., and the oscillations damped the energy out fairly quickly.

Since our only link to the shore, by that time, were the lines tied to the Bainbridge we were fine. And officially we didn't even hit the seawall.

Bainbridge, however, was not planning to get underway that day.

When tied up in a full service port, like, say, Norfolk Operations Base, a ship can shut down almost all of its onboard systems and get services from the shore - allowing the crew to go to a reduced watch schedule, and maintenance to be done the ship's systems. Among the services that are provided are: Shore power (Ten cables each an inch and half in diameter), shore potable water (basically through a specially marked firehose), shore sewage connections (a ribbed pipe that took the sewage from the ship's discharge pumps to a real sewer treatment system), and shore steam (delivered at 150 lbs pressure) for heating and cooking purposes. None of those connections had anything like the capacity to stretch that the ropes holding the ships in place did. Seven of the ten shore power cables broke; the shore pot water broke; the shore sewage broke; and especially the shore steam line broke.

The Bainbridge had, as all the nuke cruisers did, emergency diesel generators. So the loss of shore power was a nuisance, but not a catastrophe. The pot water and sewage hoses just made for small messes to be cleaned up once everything was settled.

The shore steam line went wild, however. For anyone who doesn't know what a wild hose might be, check out this . Without someone controlling a hose, the nozzle starts going where ever the Hell it wants. Very quickly, and completely uncontrollably. Usually the best way to regain control of the hose is to stop whatever is flowing through it. The hose in that video is just 50 PSI water. The steam line was supplying 150 PSI steam. It was much more violent, and hazardous in its own right. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

However, the captain of the Bainbridge had his car parked on the pier. It was right where the shore steam line ruptured. The car got beat to pieces. Oops.

Back aboard Virginia things were settling down, except for the after incident reports. One of the things that everyone wanted to know was: Just how much steam had been let into the turbine? The short answer is that no one knows. It was certainly a lot. Remember when I said that the senior throttleman was checking his board after he got the throttles shut down? One of the other gauges that he had at his panel were a series of pressure gauges. During normal operation it's fairly easy to look at the pressure of steam being applied to the turbine once past the throttles, and know how that's going to push the ship forward. So, after he got the throttles shut - and so pressure was already on the way down - he noted the input pressure. There was enough pressure there for the ship to have been going at about 2/3 of full speed!

Oh? The reason the electric shaft speed indicator hadn't budged: Someone forgot to turn it on.

After that, Virginia had something of a bad reputation on the waterfront as being a poor neighbor, and captains of other ships would refuse to let us tie up outboard of them. I believe I mentioned that being outboard is often a hassle: We were all heartbroken.

Finally, the joke that went around the ship after that was that the guy on the throttles who started all this by not looking where he was supposed to, well he really wanted just one last taste of home before got underway. This this was the day that Baz* tried to take the ship through the drive-thru at McD's.



Does this count for the squeeing, Zuul?




*Not his real name.

[What Exit?]

I've only been "to sea" for one day: the dependent's day cruise on the carrier USS Constellation. The answer to "what do you do on a naval cruise" for me was "laugh your ass off when your 12 year old sister gets lost on board the ship." Also, watching an airshow which included sound-barrier-breaking was pretty awesome, and leaning my head out the holes in the bow where the anchor chain is played out was awesome/terrifying.

Sounds like a Tiger Cruise? Was this when the Connie was ported in San Diego? She was usally berthed just aft of us when I was on the Ranger from late 1985 through the end of 1988.

[Revs]

the various watches had a new ensign going from one end of the ship to other most of the watch looking for the elusive Gyro adjustment wrench. He visited us twice in the steering gear room.

A friend of mine in the Navy told me about how on his first deployment, they had him running around the ship looking for bulkhead remover. He did not however fall for the bucket of steam gag though.

[What Exit?]

A friend of mine in the Navy told me about how on his first deployment, they had him running around the ship looking for bulkhead remover. He did not however fall for the bucket of steam gag though.

Bulkhead remover, bucket of steam, 50’ of gig line and sea bats were all standard fair. The art was coming up with something that really sounded real and giving convincing reasons why it was not here but might be there.

My brother did some sheet rocking. They would send people for the sheetrock bender, the bucket of steam and the like. One day a friend of ours was helping out. Over the past week he had been sent for a variety of imaginary items so when the boss sent him for a 3 penny sheetrock nails he refused to fall for another joke. Of course there really are 3 penny nails. They are simply nails of about 1¼” length.

[Zuul]

Does this count for the squeeing, Zuul?

I don't know about squeeing, but it gets a lot of

Wow! That is absolutely crazy and all because somebody wasn't squinting at an itty, bitty mirror like he was supposed to.

[OtakuLoki]

Bulkhead remover, bucket of steam, 50’ of gig line and sea bats were all standard fair. The art was coming up with something that really sounded real and giving convincing reasons why it was not here but might be there.

I knew one Mess Specialist who was so taken in by the variety of dehydrated foods that the Navy has aboard ship, he spent his first day and a half in his division looking for a case of dehy water.

[hamburglar]

Sounds like a Tiger Cruise? Was this when the Connie was ported in San Diego? She was usally berthed just aft of us when I was on the Ranger from late 1985 through the end of 1988.

I don't know the term "Tiger Cruise." This was just referred to as the "Dependent's Day Cruise." I think I even got a hat or a t-shirt to that effect. But yeah, you got the time and place right.

[Jaglavak]

A Classic Story

:: snif, dab ::
That was a thing of beauty, dude. I'm all yclemp, over here.

[What Exit?]

I don't know the term "Tiger Cruise." This was just referred to as the "Dependent's Day Cruise." I think I even got a hat or a t-shirt to that effect. But yeah, you got the time and place right.

Cool, you were there probably when I was. A "Tiger Cruise" is a "Dependent's Day Cruise." I used what is probably the unofficial but very commonly use term.

[Nrblex]

More sea stories?

[OtakuLoki]

In honor of the New Year, allow me to speak of one of the departed - the USS Virginia CGN 38, and the ghost we had in the enginerooms: Mr. Happy.

Mr. Happy made bad things happen in the enginerooms. For most part it was the normal crap that always gets blamed on ghosts: parts wearing out too fast, idiots turning the wrong valve, over filling a potable water tank. Stupid stuff that no one would really assign responsibility to a spirit.

But, the story was, that there was a need for "good juju" to keep Mr. Happy within the bounds of reasonable behavior. Good juju was supplied in the form of cleaned chicken bones, kept in part of the dead space within the Reactor Plant Control Panel. No one officially took notice of the chicken bones, of course. Placating a mythical spirit with good juju was not the sort of thing that happened in Rickover's Navy, even if the old man had been dead for some years by that time.

So, for most of my three years aboard the ship, the chicken bones were in the RPCP, and Mr. Happy was kept to the minor stuff I'd mentioned above.

Then we were getting ready for a visit from the Nuclear Mobile Training Team, an inspection team that helped nuclear powered ships get ready for the Nuke Navy's regular Operational Safeguards Reactor Exam (ORSE). Now, the ORSE is a cast-iron, gold-plated son-of-a-bitch of a evaluation, involving major lack of sleep, many, many drills, and observed evaluations for all the crew, and especially in the enginerooms.

So, NMTT sets itself up to be even harder. On the theory that the best training scenarios are those that are more difficult than the real thing will be.

Well, this was going to be the last NMTT visit to the Virginia, because she was slated to be decomissioned as part of the 1990s 'Peace Dividend.' The Captain and the Chief Engineer were both determined that there would be no slacking in our crew because of that dead-end destination. And so a lot of people were cleaning things up that hadn't been cleaned in years.

And the Reactor Controls Division LPO for #2 Engineroom took the chicken bones out of the RPCP. Since, of course, it was nothing more than superstition. IIRC he did this the day before, or the day that NMTT embarked.

Whichever day it was, the first full night that NMTT was onboard we had a reactor scram in #2 plant. The cause of that was never found, IIRC.

The next day during a series of observed evolutions #2 plant scrammed again, because of a failed component in one of the reactor control panels. Which made for a much more interesting observed evolution, IMNSHO. If more stressful. (I was in the middle of an observed primary coolant sample at the time, so I remember that pretty vividly.)

Finally, that night, in the middle of the night, one of the circuit breakers in the electrical plant failed. Under normal operations we had both reactor plants up, and the power generated in one plant would be used to supply electricity for the forward power loads, and the other plant would be used to supply electricity to the after power loads. (Calling the power loads forward and aft is a bit of a misnomer - both went through the length of the ship, so that even if one power system failed there would be some lighting, and other electrical supply available. They were so named based upon which engineroom normally supplied their power.) This circuit breaker was the main cross connect breaker between the two power systems.

The way it failed was unique in the experience of everyone on board. It failed so that the electromagnet that would normally close the breaker when it was put into operation (For those not familiar with electrical power conventions: when a circuit breaker is said to be open, there's no current path through it; when a circuit breaker is closed current can pass through it.) was trying to close the breaker. Since this was being done during normal operation, the two power plants were not in phase - which means that trying to cross-connect them was bad. The currents across the breaker were so high that the emergency disconnect on the breaker opened it.

And as soon as it cooled down again, the original malfunction tried to close it again. The currents were such that it was closing for less than a second. The cool down portion of the cycle was only another 1 or 2 seconds.

This went on for about 30 seconds, with no one in either engineroom really understanding what was going on, except that electrical power loads were spiking very, very high, on both systems. Those of us on watch in the steam plants could hear the electrical load jumping on the turbogenerators, as suddenly the steam valve would open to try to maintain proper speed, and meet the electrical demand. This affected the power to the reactor plant panels, again - and the safety features there decided something wasn't kosher. So this time both plants scrammed.

There's a term for a ship that doesn't have power going to the propellers while at sea: Dead In the Water. For those of you who have never been to sea, a ship's stability is usually augmented by it's motion through the water. Similar in effect, if not cause, in how it's easy to stay up on a bicycle while it's in motion, but hard while stopped. When a ship is DIW it wallows like a pig. And almost everyone who might be susceptible to seasickness will be suffering. Half the NMTT team woke up puking, or so the Officer's Mess stewards passed on to us later.

Those of us down in the plants were trying to figure out what happened. The emergency diesels came on as designed, so we had some power, but we had to find and correct the fault in the electrical system before we did anything else. However, it was pretty clear that the problem had to have had something to do with the cross connects between the two power systems, so when the roving electrician got to the breaker room, and found a small fire going on, we had the problem pretty much localized.

After about two hours, we got the failed circuit breaker rendered safe. And the breaker bars had to be removed and replaced before the breaker could be returned to service because the current spikes had been so high that they kept welding together when the breaker was shut, then being pulled apart by the disconnect mechanism. We restarted the plant. And were muttering about how obnoxious Mr. Happy was being those days.

Oh, did I mention? The cross-connect portion of the electrical system was an official part of #2 Engineroom.

That lunchtime, I think it was, the mess decks served chicken. The chicken bones were back in the RPCP before supper time, providing good juju to keep Mr. Happy quiet.

That was the last time we had any unplanned scrams aboard the USS Virginia.

Remember: Chicken bones are good juju. Would I lie to you?

[OtakuLoki]

Tomorrow: The Story of the Radioactive Poo!

[OtakuLoki]

I don't remember exactly which year this was. I think it was '93, but I may be wrong.

Whatever the year, we'd just gotten out of a shipyard availability. Shipyard periods can be really good, or really bad. This one had been pretty bad - Engineering had been on 12 and 12 duty rotations, so we were glad to be getting underway. Which is a pretty unusual situation, except for the occasional lunatic or lifer.

At any rate we got underway, and were heading back to the Caribbean. Everything was going well, when someone found a yellow polyvinyl bag in one of the auxiliary machinery rooms. In the bag were feces: a loaf that someone left as a little present. If it weren't for that yellow bag, we'd have just put it with the other trash and muttered about asshole shipyard workers.

But it was in the yellow bag. In Rickover's Navy that meant that it was radioactive. And had to be treated as such.

Which left us in a bind. As a warship, we weren't supposed to be producing biohazard contaminated rad waste - which was the most expensive category of low-level rad waste to dispose. So, from a shipboard budget perspective, treating that poo as radioactive was a bad thing.

We even could survey it, and prove it wasn't radioactive, and everything would be good. Except to do that, we had to get a detection probe within 1/4 inch of all inaccessible surfaces. Which meant, in effect, to survey the poo, and release it as non-contaminated, someone would have to spread it to a more or less uniform thickness of about 1/8 inch, and then go over every square inch of the resulting pie with the heavy, lead shielded probe. It was a job that was going to prove to be smelly, uncomfortable, and disgusting.

In a classic military maneuver, however, there was an attempt made to let this cup pass us by: It was sent up the chain, in the knowingly forlorn hope that we'd be able to just bag, tag and store it as RAM. Or perhaps do something else with it. So, from the guy who found it, things went to the chem/radcon tech on duty, who told his LPO, who told the division chief, who told our Division Officer, who told the Chem Radcon Assistant Engineer. Who finally made the report to the Chief Engineer.

Now, while I was aboard Virginia our CHENG was a pretty decent sort - but he was from Georgia (I believe) and had certain habits of speech that were ineradicable. Normally this was simply a personality quirk, and didn't affect his work, or relationship with the guys under him. This time it ended up mattering.

The report that the CRA gave to the CHENG was that there had been a yellow poly bag of shit found in one of the Aux rooms. The CHENG considered this report a moment - and told him to have the material spread out and frisked to see if it could be disposed of as regular waste.

The CRA passed this on to the division, and then the process of choosing the *ahem* lucky tech began. I was on watch in #2 Engineroom - so I was never asked. Likewise the guy on watch in #1 plant was never asked to do it. Every other person in the division was asked to do it.

And the all refused.

Along about this time, the CHENG asked for a status report.

When he was told that the division was balking, he blew his stack. He told the CRA that he was to make it a direct order, and that every sailor who refused after that was to be written up. I'm told there was a lot of hemming and hawwing after that. Finally the LCPO for the division realized that none of the techs he had in front of him were willing to do the job. And unwilling to pass on the order, he ended up spreading the poo out, and determining that it was not contaminated. Which was the outcome everyone had expected. It also stank about as badly as everyone had expected, too.

When the CRA went back to the CHENG to give him a status report, the CHENG was pleased that things were finally back on track. The way I heard it, later, he had an afterthought as the CRA was leaving: "By the way, why was there such a hassle about getting this shit spread out and frisked?"

The CRA boggled, and then remembered the speech patterns that can be common in certain areas. "Sir, when I said it was a yellow poly bag of shit, I didn't mean that it was a bag of miscellaneous junk. I meant that it was a bag containing human feces."

:shock:

And so the CHENG finally understood why he nearly had a whole division written up for disobeying a lawful order.



The thing that amused me was that before I'd entered the Navy I'd been at college long enough to flunk out. I'd been on a biology track of study, specifically with various Animal Science courses. I'd done scatological analysis before - where one takes an animal's feces and spreads it out to see what one can determine about the diet and health of the animal. It's not exactly something I find fun, but I'd have frisked the stuff out, no problem.

Not that I took the time to tell anyone in my chain of command about my experience looking through shit.