Day 18. Sub Week.

21 JUNE 2012
1833

These past two days have been awesome! It's Sub Week, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect but it's been fun.

Yesterday, we mustered at 0730. We headed over to Naval Base Point Loma, an ASW (Anti-Submarine Wareface) base. There we got the chance to do the DC (damage control) trainer, the wet trainer, and the "driving the submarine" trainer. (I don't remember the actual name for that last one...)

They split my group into 4 different smaller groups where we then split up to do the activities. My group went to the "driving the sub" trainer first. It was totally cool. I got to be the lee-helmsman and control the steering. Jake was the helmsman at the time and the Sub chief that was working with us pretending to be the OOD (officer of the deck/officer on the deck... something like that). There were 10 of us in the real life cutout of a submarine pilot house. The chief gave us orders and played around with speed and what not and it was so fun! The simulator had hydraulics and whatnot so we went at some crazy turns and angles.

After we finished with the simulator, we had lunch at the galley. The food was totally awesome! Then it was my groups turn to head over to the wet trainer.

The wet trainer has by FAR been one of the coolest things I've done within the past 3 weeks! You're enclosed in this room with pipes and the "engine" of the sub that has to be kept away from rising water and as dry as possible (which is impossible). There are multiple random leaks in the pipes that have to be patched up by us. My group of about 10 went in, we were given coveralls and sperry's to wear since we were going to get soaked. I personally have this pet peeve of getting wet when I'm not physically in a bathing suit or swimming attire. However, once I was down in the wet trainer and I was walking around in waist high water with water spraying at me from absolutely every angle possible, I embraced it and got super into it.

We're given tool bags with leak fixing tools like wrenches, adam's patches, rubber and rope, etc. And while we're down there (lasted approximately 15-20 minutes) they play with the lights, which was totally unexpected. So it went from being totally lit, to dim lights, to dark with red lights. It was a stressful situation, but I did my best to keep calm and fix the leaks.

My favorite memory was watching one of the Marine options attempt to patch one of the leaks. He had an adam's patch that would fit about a 5 in diameter pipe around a pipe that was about 3 inches in diameter. He was stressing out and legitimately couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. I went over there to help and couldn't help but laugh. He looked at me with the most panicked "help" look, ridden with innocence and worry. I'll never forget that face or how impressed he was when I pulled out an adam's patch that actually fit the pipe.

When I say you got soaked during the wet trainer, I mean you might have well just jumped into a swimming pool. They had us bring a towel, undershirt, socks, and underwear to change into afterwards (as this is all you wear under the coveralls), but do you think they reminded the females to bring a sports bra? Nope. And since they literally gave us 3 minutes to run back upstairs to grab those items since they forgot to tell us what to bring the night before, grabbing one didn't even cross my mind. Thus, (laugh all you want) but myself and at least one of the other females, were braless for the remainder of the day. To be honest, it was better than having a soaking wet sports bra on! Plus, under our NWU blouse, you couldn't even tell. So females reading this, don't forget your sports bra even when the males don't remind you to bring one!

After the wet trainer, we met up with the other half of our large group to tour an SSN, or a fast attack submarine. I personally have toured that exact sub before so it wasn't as exciting the second time (especially since sonar didn't even play the cool marine life (specifically the dolphins) noises that they get to listen to). SSN's are super cramped too, so trying to fit a group of 30 MIDN onto an already crowded with the crew submarine wasn't very fun.

We finally got back to base around 6 where I took a shower and headed to dinner. I also went to the rec yard to watch a movie with some friends and ended up spending the rest of the night visiting with Bryan. We initially wanted to go bowling, but decided we actually wanted to go a little too late, so we just hung out in the TV lounge. He's a super guy and we have plans to go bowling tonight!

So that's where I'm heading off to. Supposed to meet him in about... 2 minutes, but I gotta be fashionably late right? :)