In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 8

In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 8

My first real cruise was a training “mission” to Fort Liquordale (Lauderdale). The reason was to certify the ship for action, weapons that is. I am not sure if we tied up at Coco Beach or Liquordale to actually swap out all of the live torpedoes for “exercise” ones. One of the two. Hell, that could be wrong too I suppose. Somewhere in FLA..

The first thing we do after we tie up is start rigging the Weapons handling system. I won’t go into details, but it’s like an erector set gone mad. There are lots a parts and things that have to be moved around, all so you can slide weapons up or down these rails between topside and the Torpedo Room. You basically slide the weapon under the cradle, gently drop the upper part of the cradle over top of the weapon and secure it to the bottom part of the cradle which are called “Belly Bands” from underneath.

Once secure, you can raise the weapon to about 45 degrees on a hydraulic lift and send it up topside on the rails you spent hours bolting into place. Then a crane latches on and hauls it over to shore. Since I was new, I had the illustrious job of taking the belly bands back and forth. It was not so bad when you were off loading weapons, because you had to carry them from the pier back down to the Torpedo room. It’s a different story when it’s the other way around and you have to lug these things (three at a time) up the ladder of the main escape trunk, two decks high. They were cumbersome, more than heavy. If they get grease on them (which abounds on a sub) they get very slippery. Whatever uniform you are wearing is trashed in the process, regardless.

Once you get all of the live torpedoes off, you have to load on all of the fake ones, it takes almost a full day to complete the whole thing, because there are a lot of torpedoes! Once it’s all done, you have to disassemble the whole weapons shipping system and stow it. It makes for a very tiring day for the whole weapons department, and everyone chips in to help.

Keep in mind we have to go through all this again when we finish the certification, a huge pain in the ass. The only relief is that we leave the topside cradle in port, fully assembled, while we do the testing.

We did have some time off during the whole cycle and Dyke and I headed out fairly early one morning, on foot. We got off base of, then hitched a ride with a passing van that also had guys on shore leave (we were too eager to wait for the van, till it was passing us). We got dropped off in town and Dyke and I headed off.

We came upon a diner and decided we should get some food in us. We went in and grabbed a booth. The place was spacious and bright, lots of large windows. One of us noticed a smoking hot blonde chick, alone, a few booths away.

We ordered our food and started eating, occasionally looking up at the girl, until she smiled at us. We didn’t know what to do. This girl was out of our league, she was out of everyone’s league! Then, it happened. She stood and slowly sauntered over to our table…my god she was hot.

She smiled at us both, it was like slow motion, right there in front of the table. She said “Come see me tonight.”, and dropped two cards on the table. We ignored the cards and just checked out her perfect ass as she walked to the door and left. We got a wink over her shoulder as she exited. Frankly, I was done, I felt I could go back to the Boat and call it a day. Dyke had a card in his hand and proclaimed “She’s a stripper!”

I had to pick up the other card myself, this chick was too pretty to be doing that, but I read the card and sure enough, she was just a stripper. It had her personalized picture and everything. The thoughts in my mind melted in defeat. She left us a calling card for work.

Needless to say, that night, we called.