Underway

When a big ship is underway a lot of things happen, the first of which is you realize you are moving. As soon as we had pulled out of the protected gulf and made our way into deeper seas, the ship began to sway, roll, tilt, and rock. This is fun at first. If you walk outside and lean over the rail (for which you get yelled at) you can see the plowing effect of the bulbous bow makes as it surges through the uneven swells of the sea, making a continuous running bow wake alongside us. If you take the time to walk the 6 flights of stairs to the top of the aft deck (a place called the sun deck, which is conveniently nestled between the two smoke stack billows) you can see the side to side rocking of the ship, with the flat tarmac of the ship crisscrossing the horizon. At other times the ship rocks and bows, with the nose digging into oncoming waves, only to rise back up again. On the open seas your visibility is directly related to how high above the water you are. Being only 60-90 feet up on the top deck you can only see about 26 miles in any direction, regardless of the clarity of skies. So you feel pretty isolated looking out hour after hour and seeing only blue water with the occasional white cap lacing.

Another thing that happens is that people begin to have more time on their hands. Without patients to care for other things can be done. The ship gets cleaned, items get repaired, folks get to rest, people interact with each other more, and they get to have emergency preparedness drills. These are silly drills where they “pretend” there is a fire somewhere or a man overboard or the ship is sinking. Someone gets on the intercom and sounds the alarm, then they narrate the event as if it were happening, “fire located on 01 floor aft side zone 6, it is uncontained and emergency crew personnel are arriving on the scene” or something to that extent. Meanwhile everyone has to put on a life jacket and muster (assemble) on the top deck tarmac. Each and every 1400+ people on the ship. It becomes a sea of ridiculous looking orange people. Then the alarm is called off and we go back to our normal business.

With all the time available underway the “Fun Boss” is hard at work making sure we have, well, um… fun. She throws movie nights on the top deck with a big projector displaying the movie onto the helo hanger. There are exercise classes (spin, cardio, abs, etc). Bingo nights complete with 1,500 jackpot prizes. Poker and dominoes tournaments. And something referred to as steel beach, which is essentially a beach party on the top deck all day long. There is the Navy Band plugged into full set of amplified speakers blaring music, several inflatable kiddie pools filled with water, super soakers galore, a basketball hoop, and bbq food cooking on the grills. It’s a great time up there. I never thought I would shoot hoops on a huge Navy ship, or kick a soccer ball around, throw a Frisbee, or sit in a kiddie pool.

On the more educational side of things, we kept ourselves busy by going to CME lectures held daily, spent time with the radiologists learning how to perform ultrasound exams, and cherry-picking interesting cases from the pathologist’s collection of slides from the trip.

Of course the more days you spend at sea, the more you are ready and restless to get of the ship and see some patients.

Bon Voyage,

~Nic