The previous post is On Land.
The next post is Notes at Sea (Monday, April 2).

Notes At Sea (Sunday, April 1) · Apr 15, 11:06 AM

1131 EDT — The ship surfaced late this morning, and she’ll remain here until a couple of things that have gone wrong are repaired. The CO just gave Dennis and I the run-down. Ed is snoring in his rack. With luck and a couple hours of furiously working on it, we’ll be fully operational and submerged again before he wakes up. If the problems are unresolvable I may arrive early in Port Canaveral.

I got up today at 0430 to catch the last few hours of knife-fighting with the test ship. Ed, because he’s the experienced one, and because these tests are the most complex, had been up all night. Once we finished that series of test events he left for his rack. I stayed up ninety minutes more to oversee our transition into a block of scheduled free time, where the ship can do as she pleases, executing drills, periscope depth operations, etc.. As soon as that began I climbed back into my rack and set a 3:45 timer.

I only slept about 3 1/2 hours last night. First I wanted to watch the first couple Close Encounter runs, and then I stayed up to hang out in the sonar shack.

1532 EDT — The ship is deep again. At some point I updated Ed on the situation and he went back to sleep. Intermittent light applause from the crew’s mess drifts in — an award ceremony. Afterwards everyone gets ice-cream sundays and _Lets Go To
Prison_. I poked my head into control after a dive alarm, but the CO and a crowd of officers were driving the ship, so I turned around and went back to the movie.

Now a couple of guys are playing Halo 2. The ice-cream is still out, melting slowly.

...

The ship just went down at ten degrees. There was a racket from the kitchen — dirty dishes, pans, splashing, crashing — the guys were cursing the OOD and gave control a stop-it call.

...

They drew me into a game of Halo, and I broke out of my losing streak to get four kills. I stepped out of the second game, handing my controller to one of the best players on board — a chief. According to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard riders the crew used to have an Xbox 360, but it was the casualty of improper stowage and a steep dive angle, sliding out from under the TV and crashing four feet to the mess floor.

The mess crew is setting up for dinner around us. According to the blackboard: onion soup, roast rib of beet, bakes potatoes, corn, and strawberry shortcake. (The roast rib will turn out to have been delicious).

1924 EDT — Lets Go To Prison is showing again for another watch. Ed, Dennis, and I sat around in the mess after dinner with the COB, a long-careered Master Chief. After than, a seaman pulled me up to sonar to show me a problem with the augmenter. Ed helped with the troubleshooting. We’re watching Lets Go waiting for COMEX on the next test event. It’s a couple hours off.

You know those movies where nobody can hear you scream in space? In the part where the alien is finally loose and killing people, there’s invariably a scene with someone scared and flickering, eerie lighting. That’s what the night-light in the nine-man room is like now, except I’m not really scared. It’s been like that since the ship-wide Field Day cleanup on Saturday: intermittent, aperiodic strobing blue and orange flashing through a metal grill and ankle level by the door, casting sharp shadows.

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