Tales From The Travels

When I came on active duty I gave up the tradition of having my summers off, a tradition that I’ve enjoyed as a faculty member for many years. Of course, I’m also getting paid for my summers now, which is something new and pleasant. The problem is that school still finishes up in May. So, what do you do with a bunch of military faculty members over the summer? We have to be doing something for those three months. They can’t just let us wander around.

As a result, we all have military duties we have to fulfill during the summer months. This is a very generic term and covers a lot of ground. To keep it within the realm of reality, the command has a number of things that we can pick from. We can teach over the summer, for instance. There are a few summer classes, but not many. We can stand various watches. And, so on. But, if you don’t pick something and get it approved, they’ll find something for you. Knowing this, when I got here I immediately started looking for some military duty to fill my summers.

One of the military duties is the Offshore Sailing Training Squadron (OSTS). We have a large sailing program here at the academy for the purpose of teaching midshipmen how to handle boats and the particulars of teamwork at sea. Its a very good program and I’ve talked with several officers that did this when they were midshipmen and they have all remarked how it made them better ship handlers when they went out in the fleet after graduation. The program is very rigourous and involves intense training on the Navy 44′ sailboats we have. After getting trained, a team of 10 takes a boat out to sea and sails up to Newport, RI. Several boats will go at once in a squadron. Once in Newport the midshipmen conduct various kinds of training at the Navy base there for about a week before sailing back to Annapolis. The whole trip to Newport takes about four weeks to complete and may involve sailing to some additional locations.

Well, when I learned about this I jumped at the chance. They are always looking for military officers to be involved. But, like I said, its an intense program and not some sunny afternoon sitting on the lido deck while tooling around Chesapeake Bay. I did a hard week’s training in September on the 26′ boats that involved 2 1/2 to three hours a day after work, before graduating to the beautiful Navy 44′. I just finished two weeks of even harder training on the these sleek boats, learning the difference between a sheet and a line. We met every day after work and rigged the boats, conducted full checks by the regulations, and then conducted briefings about what we were going to do. Once uderway, we rotated between all of the stations to ensure we were all trained on how to operate the boat. When done, we secured the boat and stowed all of the gear, usually in the dark by that time.

All of this led up to the final training evolution last Friday when we took the boat out into the bay and sailed all night. This gave us time to rotate through all of the underway watches and get training on the navigational lights at sea and rules of the road with other ships out there. We started getting the boat ready for everything in the late afternoon and, after some delays, were able to get underway about 8:30. We sailed out into the bay in a storm and found out our navigation system didn’t work. None of us wanted to pull in, so we resorted to the old fashioned system and took visual fixes, plotting them on navigational charts to find our location. In addition to lifevests that automatically inflate when they get wet, we had safety straps tying us to the boat so if we fell overboard we would still be connected to the boat. We kept track of the buoys and channel markers and adjusted our heading for the traffic moving in and out of Baltimore harbor. The storm would get more intense before slacking off for a while, but we had our foul weather gear on and that kept us pretty warm and dry. It was fun working the sails and navigating our way up and down the bay and the adversity of the storm just made it better.

The purpose of all this training was to get us to the point where we can train and manage the mids next summer. Our training isn’t over by a long shot. We will have to do a lot of classroom training over the winter and more time on boats in the spring. But, the bulk is done and we should all be ready to be a number two on a boat next summer. Eventually, I’ll get my certification to be a skipper and be the number one guy. But, that’s a ways off still. Like I said, the military training is intense and demanding.

So, it was a very demanding two weeks, both physically and mentally. I had many other things going on in addition to sailing, and I still had to do my normal teaching job. I was feeling stretched thin by last Friday and was glad to see it come. I’m not one of those people that spends their time counting the days until the weekend, but last week I was counting the hours. My son was a real trooper during all of this and was very supportive and understanding of the way I was neglecting him and the house.

So, I felt very good when we pulled in Saturday morning and finally got home about 4 o’clock. I am satisfied with the amount of progress I made with the three weeks of sailing training this fall. I’m certainly not an ‘old hand’ now, but neither am I just a novice. I can now rig a boat, get it underway, handle it, and get it back pierside. And, I got through all of this while still fulfilling all of my other responsibilities.

But, it came at a cost. The physical demands of the last two weeks have left me fatigued and sore. I spent all day Saturday watching the storm from the comfort of my living room between naps. I had finally gotten to bed about 4:30 Saturday morning, after cleaning up when I got home and slept a long time before I got up. But, you know what? I still got up Saturday morning before my teenage son did.

I’ve been debating about what to do with this blog and I’ve been torn between the options. I actually have more readers than I ever really thought possible. I mean, there are millions of blogs out there, why would someone want to read mine? But, apparently, there are quite a few people that do. But, it takes a lot of my time to maintain this blog, time I can use on other things. In the end, I just have to admit that I enjoy telling a story and this is too much of a temptation. So, I’m going to continue and I hope that you can enjoy the stories I tell here.

I’ve been very busy since I made my last posting. I went on active duty (again!) on August 1. Since then, its been a whole series of events. Let me just say that life has been very good for me since I came down here to Maryland and we’re living large.

Life at the Naval Academy is better than I could have ever thought. The students are more disciplined and dedicated than any group of students I have taught since I taught night school at the community college years ago. Its a great pleasure, especially after teaching at Angelo State University and the University of South Dakota, to teach students that show up for class (especially ones that show up sober) and actually do the work. USD, in particular, was well known as a party school and many kids there were more interested in the after-hours activities than in doing what it took to pass a course. As a teacher, you get tired of dealing with students like that. There may be a lot of things to say about the Naval Academy, but I’ve never heard anyone say they came to the Academy for the parties.

Being an officer and a professor at the academy has its benefits. I’ve been training for the Offshore Sailing Training Squadron and have been sailing in the Severn River. Next summer, I hope to be in the team that sails from Annapolis down the Chesapeake Bay, out into the Atlantic Ocean and up to Newport, RI. This is something they do every summer with a number of 44′ sailboats. They need naval officers to be a part of the crew and I’ve been told they never have enough officer volunteers, so I have a good chance of being selected for the cruises. I’m really looking forward to the experience.

That is just one example of the benefits of being here. Like I said, we’ve been living very well. And, that is something that I feel I’ve worked long and hard for and am now enjoying the benefits of my hard work.

But, I’m not the only one. My son is also enjoying our life here. Our townhouse is lovely and we are both starting to get that feeling that this is home and not just a place we happen to be sleeping at. This is our place and we are enjoying ourselves.

He is doing well in the high school, has made some friends and is obviously very happy with his life. That is a good thing and I feel like I owe it to him, after all that he’s been through. My immediate goal is to stay here long enough for him to finish high school.

As for me, I’m settling in to living in Maryland. This is a beautiful area and has a lot to offer, but I don’t think it is as nice as New England and I still miss Connecticut. But, this is a good area and I’m enjoying myself. I took my girlfriend skydiving yesterday out over the Delmarva Peninsula. We could see the Chesapeake Bay all the way to the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It was a great thrill and I was really glad I could take her. I’ve done it before, but it was her first time and it went just perfectly.

So, I’ll be back on a regular basis to tell my stories and talk about things. I’ll be sailing every evening for the next two weeks and I have a couple of scientific papers I’ve been working on, so it may be hard for me to find the time in the near term, but I’ll make the effort over the long term. By the way, I had a paper accepted and will appear in the scientific newspaper, Eos, published by the American Geophysical Union, next week (the October 21st issue). I have a lot of observations about a lot of things in the news, but I have to careful about what I say. I gave up my right to free speech when I went on active duty and I can’t say anything that might be considered disrespectful of our government or members of the government.

So, look back here for further updates.