The previous post is Notes At Sea (Sunday, April 1).
The next post is Notes at Sea (Tuesday, April 3).

Notes at Sea (Monday, April 2) · Apr 18, 08:43 PM

1805 EDT — Lunch was sweet & sour chicken — a new recipe this year — with pork fried rice, curry vegetable soup, vegetable stir fry, and sugar cookies. Dinner was beef & shrimp stir fry with steamed rice, carrots, egg drop soup, and a dangerously good pineapple upside down cake. Sickly sweet and yummy.

Senior Chief Kuhn is a rider from NUWC, here to see how the new Equipment works and carry back word to the engineers. Young Ensign Gilmour is on his first underway; he’s intimidated by the sheer volume of knowledge that he’s got to stuff into his brain, commenting, “I’m getting a lot less sleep that I did before … a lot less”. He’s not qualified to do much of anything yet, so I see him in control a lot, standing watch as Junior Officer of the Deck. There’s a charismatic LTCDR from MIT graduate (research: ad-hoc underwater sensor networking); a couple of days ago his rack curtain went missing. He wire-locked open the door to that room and went to sleep naked — his curtain was expeditiously replaced. The XO is not terribly loved, but I think that’s his job (as to his effectiveness, I couldn’t say). There a couple petty officers riding from another submarine in dry dock, here to lighten the load on the sonar shack during the testing. He’s also rated as a diver. The kitchen crew are the only guys not in poopy suits — the get maroon “Roadrunner Grill” tees. Captain Douglas is friendly and straight-forward. He’s appeared in control when things get interesting.

The ship at periscope depth bobs gently with the sea state. When running deep, the only motion is from changes to the rudder and dive planes. There’s a rumble from the engine sometimes.

The light in the nine-man is completely out now. I lay still in the dark listening to the motion of the ship and the sounds that permeate through to my rack. We’re deep — I look up through the pressure hull and imagine the crushing darkness in all directions, straining to rush in. The pleasant ocean surface is impossibly far away. Waves sparkle in the sunlight and pleasure craft crawl around like ants. We’re traveling in a forcibly man-made bubble in a cold underworld. Sea water would rush in and take away all the air if it could. To die here is to be buried far away from the sunrises, sunsets, and escape into sparkling heavens. The sea would be a quiet, lonely tomb.

And the kitchen crew is rocking out to Dashboard Confessional while they work.

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