All About Trey

Sea Stories

Well I've decided to write up some of my tales of adventure from the Navy. Why? I guess a couple of reasons. A week or so I found some old letters that I had written while on deployment and it made me think about my old Navy days. My life now is so different from then and I just want to try to capture some of that. I'm also trying to determine why the Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and all of the Iraq stuff is bothering me so much, but doesn't seem to phase my USNA classmates. Anyways, I'm still working through that so expect some interesting, hopefully funny, sea stories from me in the future.

However, while the Navy world seems very familiar to me, I guess it can be pretty confusing and I probably left some info out that I shouldn't have. So for my first sea story, I guess I should provide some context:

My department head had been standing Tactical Action Officer in Combat when the ship took position on the wrong ship. While this is primarily the OOD's (Officer of the Deck's) fault, the team in Combat didn't do him any favors. When the Captain got the flashing light memo, he went off. He relieved the OOD, and not trusting the Combat Watch Officer who didn't catch this mistake either, he put the TAO on the bridge. Apparently the Captain pulled the relieved OOD and the Combat Watch Officer out onto a bridge wing and flamed them to the point were there was just a burnmark on the bulkhead (wall).

The Captain did trust me. Which was odd as we didn't exactly get along great (and more sea stories about that later). He trusted me enough to have me stand the bridge watch for the rest of my time on board the ship. Which was good, and bad. But more on that later.

posted by Trey @ 12:49 PM