Wednesday, Third day at sea

What a blast! While Assistant Fixing Officer (AFixO) and lifebuoy sentry aren't all that great, if not downright depressing (taking down random names and numbers? yawn!), lookout is pretty fun. You have to look around all the time, figure out what is what—it sounds simple enough, but when you have a contact just on the horizon and you have no clue what you're looking at, it gets tough—and report it, quickly. It would be a drag to do it hours on end, but for an hour it's fine.

What was REALLY interesting was Officer of the Watch (OOW). Now, I'm still not doing everything a real OOW has to do, and we have constant supervision, but it's still pretty cool. You get reports from your lookouts and you have to keep an eye on all the ships around you, especially those ahead or those that might cross ahead too close to you, as well as keeping an eye on what the helmsman is doing and making sure you're on track. It's hard enough staying on a track in a straight line and correcting for whenever the current, wind, or helm pushes you away from where you have to be, but you have to turn and get on another track, too!

You're puttering happily away at, say, fifteen knots, with your fixing officer happily taking down fixes and your electronic chart telling you exactly where you are and how far (down to the nearest yard) you are from the track, and your helmsmen constantly staying within a few degrees of whatever course you're steering, and you have the XO (or, God forbid, the CO) sitting behind you to make sure you don't run aground or run over someone, and then your train of though about where you are and when you have to change gets interrupted.

“Officer of the Watch, Port Lookout.”

You blink and take a step or two towards the port door to hear your lookout better.

“Officer of the Watch,” you say, to let your lookout know you're ready to receive his report.

“Sir, one new contact, bearing red 30, range far, one small power driven vessel.”

One look out the window, thirty degrees off the bow (the pointy end), maybe a quick look through the binoculars. “Very good,” you say, and the lookout resumes his... looking out. If you're lucky, the new contact is too far away to be important, or on a track that leads him away from you. If not, you have to take his bearing—if it doesn't change over a period of time, you're in trouble: you'll collide! If the bearing changes, you might stil have to report to the XO or CO to make sure you don't get too close.

“XO, Officer of the Watch,” you say.

“XO.”

“Sir, one new contact to report...” you start. Your report is much more complex: you have to tell him where, how far, what, how it's moving, it's CPA (Closest Point of Approach) and so on, and recommend the course of action you think is appropriate. That really depends on the rules of the road (COLREGS) but often you don't have to really do anything. The XO might decide otherwise and alter course you don't crash, but that doesn't happen too often.

By now you have to make a course change, so the Navigation officer tells you how far you are off the point where you'll turn, and when it's time, you order your helmsman to turn his wheel. You come up to the course and, if you're lucky, you're almost right on track. If not, you have to do corrections again.

It goes on and on and on.

It's even worse when you're a trainee and you're going through somewhere with a lot of traffic. A trained officer takes over as OOW and you become the Second Officer of the Watch (2OOW). That means you get the reports, but the OOW has the conn (control of the ship) and basically has power over everything. That means you have to sort out through the reports and only tell the OOW about the important ships, so he can concentrate on keeping on track through a narrow passage.

All that is somewhat demanding, but incredibly fun. There's nothing like being in control of thousands of tons of metal hurtling over the seas at twenty knots, while passing by sailboats and small pleasure craft. At a whim, you can do anything you want—not entirely true, but true enough.

After the “trouble” on Monday, it's been pretty good. Being on the upper decks is good: the fresh air and the sun just keep me in an almost persistent good mood. Well, that and the fact I'm actually doing something relevant to my job, for once. No more playing soldier... for now!

I get to be OOW again tomorrow, and hopefully my watch won't be cut in half by going through a busy channel. I also get to do boring but necessary stuff like AFixO and DC (Damage Control) roundsman. That's pretty much it for tomorrow, though.

I gave a few tours to civilians today and it was pretty good. People definately look at you differently when you're telling them about something they have no clue about, and you just move around pointing different things out to them. Of course there isn't all that much on Orca to tell people about, but it's fun to see the look on kids' faces when you take them in the engine room and let them look around the big twelve-cylinder diesel engines and the generators and all the fun equipment down there. (It's also fun to see them when you tell them they can sit in the Captain's chair, but don't tell the CO I let someone sit in his chair!)

Other than that, well, I'm looking forward to the rest of my time “at sea,” and I hope next year's MARS III won't totally kick my behind. It's all Navy stuff from now on, though, so even if I end up sucking at it I'll probably like it anyway.