Thursday, January 26, 2006
Bay Ops
Today was the first day of water survival in the Bay Ops department. The water survival we did before was just skills training, this is centered on how to use the equipment we are provided. As advertised, we practice these in the Pensacola Bay. Water temperature today? 53 degrees fahrenheit. Yikes.
We had a bunch of presentations, which at lease one squid slept through part of. Damn squids. The lectures were boring and the room was hot, but this stuff will keep you alive if you have to eject or bail out of your aircraft, it might be important.
Fortunately, this was a Navy run operation so we got wetsuits. If the Marine Corps was running the show they'd just tell us to suck it up, it's "good training." First we fired off some M79 signal flares which were exactly like the flares my dad has from his days in the Marines during Vietnam. Guess if it works there's no reason to fix it. Then we popped some smoke and fired off a night signal which is like a road flare with a much bigger flame and only about 30 seconds of burn time. Ho hum.
Following the flare shoot off, we strapped on survial gear and inflated the LPUs (Life Preserving Unit) attached to them. We lined up on the pier in pairs and on the command "ditch, ditch, ditch" we jumped off into the freezing water. It was brutal for about a minute before all of the swimming around warmed us up. We climbed into a one person raft, rolled out, then swam to a 20 person raft. That one was a little more difficult to climb into, you have to flop onto a boarding ramp, turn around, stand up, and climb over the side into the raft. The bag may say 20 person raft, but it's not a roomy 20 people. We were all hip to hip with our feet pulled up, curled into a ball. Then we had a short class in the raft on surviving at sea for an extended period of time before rolling out and swimming the raft ashore.
The whole day was pretty cool actually; another one of those days when, as I was walking to the car to go home the clouds opened up, the sun shined, and I thought to myself, "I have the best fucking job in the world."
We had a bunch of presentations, which at lease one squid slept through part of. Damn squids. The lectures were boring and the room was hot, but this stuff will keep you alive if you have to eject or bail out of your aircraft, it might be important.
Fortunately, this was a Navy run operation so we got wetsuits. If the Marine Corps was running the show they'd just tell us to suck it up, it's "good training." First we fired off some M79 signal flares which were exactly like the flares my dad has from his days in the Marines during Vietnam. Guess if it works there's no reason to fix it. Then we popped some smoke and fired off a night signal which is like a road flare with a much bigger flame and only about 30 seconds of burn time. Ho hum.
Following the flare shoot off, we strapped on survial gear and inflated the LPUs (Life Preserving Unit) attached to them. We lined up on the pier in pairs and on the command "ditch, ditch, ditch" we jumped off into the freezing water. It was brutal for about a minute before all of the swimming around warmed us up. We climbed into a one person raft, rolled out, then swam to a 20 person raft. That one was a little more difficult to climb into, you have to flop onto a boarding ramp, turn around, stand up, and climb over the side into the raft. The bag may say 20 person raft, but it's not a roomy 20 people. We were all hip to hip with our feet pulled up, curled into a ball. Then we had a short class in the raft on surviving at sea for an extended period of time before rolling out and swimming the raft ashore.
The whole day was pretty cool actually; another one of those days when, as I was walking to the car to go home the clouds opened up, the sun shined, and I thought to myself, "I have the best fucking job in the world."
// posted by Josh @ 1/26/2006 04:00:00 PM 
