Emergency Breakaway - Guest Post

From my author friend and X-shipmate, Jay Yurth.  Amazon.com




In late 1978 after months of little in and out-to-sea trips to do drills, tests and inspections, the “Sara” headed out with me the “boot camp” 19 year old, for my first 6 month Mediterranean Ocean cruise, where I worked night shift. Under the “cool” tutelage of my supervisor Bob or “Ski” as everyone called him, I sat and keypunching my fingers off for 12 hours. 7pm to 7am every single day while underway at sea. Ski was cool because he was a bit older than me but he didn’t act like a supervisor. I had worked for 3 years as a dishwasher before joining the Navy and I know what a jerk supervisors can be and Ski was not one. To help the boredom, mundane and repetition of the shift go by with some kind of bearability, (yeah, spell checker says that isn’t a word) there were a few things that Ski allowed on his shift. Of course there was the coffee, smoking of cigs ($2 a CARTON, we actually had cigarette ration cards. 2 cartons a pay day limit) and Denise Thurman always had cigars, and he had his reasons to always have them. No smoking on any ships now though. The “Smoking Lamp” is out. The Smoking Lamp used to be turned off whenever we were getting refueled from an oiler, but I digress. Another great moral booster was the congenial rotating order of music that could be played. You came in and placed whichever cassette tape (those were so cool, sure beat the 8 track) you wanted to hear up by the tape player which sat over the computer tape racks. Someone had wired the speakers into the false overhead, so it was a nice thing and everyone could hear the music from anywhere in the shop. I was a rocker but I had to listen to everyone else’s music as they too had to endure mine. This is how I can actually still sing along with a few songs from Spyro Gyra, Funkadelic, and Parliament as well as Linda Ronstadt and Nicollette Sheridan. These were not groups I would have bought but hey my shipmates had to endure my Pink Floyd, Styx and R.E.O. Speedwagon. And we played them over and over and over again.

So listen, around 1am after 6 hours of keying in random numbers from our MAFS, SAFS and Flight Data and filling up the chad bin, we needed a break. Remember this was the ’70s man and marijuana left a smell that was easily traced to the person who smoked it. So the “old timers” let us boot camps know what was OK to do, if we must. After our 1st port in Rota, Spain...the coffers were refueled, evidently. Hash was everywhere now and could be easily purchased. Seams Hashish was very low in odor and that was let’s say, “overlooked” by everyone in our shop but one guy, and we knew he was on day shift which meant he was asleep at 1am. But that was our break time, so we slide the computer tape racks a bit, just enough to get behind them, went over to some perfectly placed electrical transformers that had 3 nice 1 foot by 1 foot flat insulation tops on them, took out our “one hit” hash pipes made from felt tip markers and did a hit, or three.

When we came back out from behind the tape racks Denise Thurman would look at us and we would smile and wink and he would light up his favorite cigar and keep on keypunching, nary was a word ever said. Now hash smoke was not very noticeable, but Denise had our backs. Hash did though produce the munchies. So one day as “Red” (you figure out why we called him that) and I were just finishing up our 1am break and he mentioned to me that he heard the ice cream fountains were up and running again after being out for a long stretch. So we knew were we had to go. Back aft to the mess decks. Once there we stood in the surprisingly short line with the other half closed-eyed sailors awaiting an ice cream cone of any size!!

On this particular night as we leaned against a bulkhead and gobbled down the 7 inch high chocolate treat, a weird alarm went off. Emergency Breakaway, Emergency Breakaway. Just as our slightly fuzzy minds started to realize that we probably had to like, run somewhere, the Aircraft Carrier took an alarmingly quick and sharp list to port (left you landlubbers). Now like I said, we had practiced for months and never had we ever heard this alarm, nor anything called emergency breakaway. Well, zoom...off to the shop we ran, actually dumping our cones in a trashcan along the way. Back in the shop, not even the salty “Shellbacks” had even heard of this one.

We found out quickly as the Captain actually came on the 1MC (ships PA system) in due time. We had been coming along side an oiler or a supply ship (I forget which) and the other ships rudder had malfunctioned and was stuck Port. So the big Aircraft Carrier was pounding the other ship as we were probably 3 times bigger going up and down in the open ocean waves. So we had to break away. Wow, some words actually make sense for the action it details.

We beat that poor little ship up so bad that it had to be towed back to a port for rehab. It did a million dollars’ worth of damage to our ship also. Messed up an aircraft elevator and catwalks on the starboard side (right).

Well, there we no deaths and we had something to talk about the next night on our break away (haha) from the monotony, while we got our ice cream cones.