Years ago, I did boat deliveries with a friend. Typically delivery captains will hire one or two crew to share watch duties while underway. With a 2-person crew, if it’s your watch, you navigate, trim the sails, chart progress along your course, and basically ensure the boat doesn’t sink. This ship is a bit larger than the ones I served on and so each of the thirty-some volunteers are assigned duty stations. I’m in engineering, so every two hours of my 4-hour watch, I take readings from a variety of systems such as the generators, water reclamation systems, refrigeration systems, and so forth. My post tonight is on the brow of the tank deck where I sit with another crew member to ensure some random guy doesn’t try to come aboard. I’m not sure what I’d do if they did. The ship’s gift shop is within arm’s distance so I suppose I could lob a barrage of refrigrator magnets and key chains at him until he cried uncle and my watch partner called for reinforcements. This is, after all, a bonefied WWII battle hardened war ship.
For the majority of the day today I worked on the main deck selling membership subscriptions and Gatorade to visitors. My partner (we do most everything in twos) was a retired Marine Colonel. These guys have the best stories. I researched most everything I could find in print about these ships and life aboard a Naval vessel but have found that I only scratched the surface. So much…the good stuff really…isn’t written down. And the really good stuff comes from listening to them share stories and watch as a passerby picks up on a common duty station or ship or aircraft or a shared experience until the visit to see some old ship becomes a safe place to share a sacred part of their past with comrades.
It’s 11:00 pm and I still have an hour on watch. A nice storm rolled in and the sound of rain against the steel hull is a peaceful close to the day. Cya tomorrow.
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