Wow. Now you’re really hip into the shipboard life, right? Well… not quite.
Once you’ve completed Indoc, your division gets you back. Be ready for various assignments – such as your PQS assignments, and your maintenance assignments.
And, though no one likes it, it’s a necessary evil - be ready to be assigned away from your division for Food Service Attendant (FSA) duties sometime during your first year aboard ship. FSA duty is 90 days (for the first tour) where you are assigned to the S-2 division to work either on the mess decks, in the Chief’s Mess, or in the Ward Room (that’s Officer country). Yes, we have cooks, called Mess Specialists (MS) – but not enough for them to cook, and clean, and stock food… so FSA is designed to augment the MS people. You will likely feel over worked and under appreciated, but you are doing a job that needs to be done, and that has been done by just about every enlisted individual above you. I’m not going to say that you need to just suck it up – but remember that this doesn’t last forever (though it may seem so at the time). In reality, these days the FSA individuals get some better working conditions than when I first enlisted. And you’re not standing duty days while in FSA status.
You will be assigned to an inport watch section (or at least should have been, but there were ships that used to forgo it until after indoc), as well as any underway watch section that your rating may stand.
Watches & watchstanding are necessary, and not just because of the recent war on terrorism – there’s been watches and watchstanding since the beginning of the Navy. There are different watches for inport and underway. Inport, there are items such as OOD, Petty Officer of the Watch (POOW), Messenger of the watch (MOOW), DMAA, Duty Driver, and Command Duty Officer (CDO). Just about everyone stands one or more of the above (and not all watches are listed), depending upon their pay grade or rank. Some of these watches are for security, some to maintain ship’s condition. Duty section personnel are responsible for the condition of the ship while the rest of the crew is on liberty.
Underway watches depend upon your rating – STG’s such as myself stand watch in Sonar Control, Operations Specialists (OS) in Combat Information Center, Boatswain’s Mates (BM) on the Bridge, and so on.
The rotation of the watches is different these days. [special effect: pulling glasses to tip of nose, and talking in a raspy voice] When I first joined the Navy, our watches were set up thusly:
- 0800-1200 – Morning Watch
- 1200-1600 – Afternoon Watch
- 1600-1800 – First Dog Watch
- 1800-2000 – Second Dog Watch
- 2000-2400 – Evening Watch
- 0000-0400 – Mid Watch
- 0400-0800 – Rev Watch
[clearing throat, pushing glasses back up] These days, the rotation is slightly different:
- 0700-1200 – Morning Watch
- 1200-1700 – Afternoon Watch
- 1700-2200 – Evening Watch
- 2200-0200 – Mid Watch
- 0200-0700 – Rev Watch
The reason for the change? I don’t really know. I do know that it allows fewer watchstanders to maintain a decent rotation (trust me – you don’t really want to have to stand the mid watch every duty day) without getting “burned out”. It also works better for chow – instead of needing a watch relief for chow, the rotation allows the watchstander to eat first, rather than in the middle of the watch (less worry about indigestion that way).
