some boat pictures

yes, i really did play sailor. and i've got the pictures to prove it!

so here are a couple of pix i used to have posted to my website before it came crashing down, due to server problems, and my being lazy. one of these days i'll have to get my act together and fire up the site again. until then, enjoy.

ah yes, the world famous Horse and Cow. Quite a legendary submarine bar, still talked about today. they have moved to the bremerton/silverdale area i think. may have to check it out when we go north this summer


Capt. Charlie Mac presenting me my dolphins, underway in 75. that fine looking gent in the foreground was BIG (his nickname). someday i'll tell you about the coffee pot, BIG, and the poor unsuspecting new nooklear unqualified person (me) on midwatch


a young lad indulging in two of his many vices caffeine and tobacco. i've heard that the fleet is really tough on smokers now. it helped that my skipper was a pipe and cigar smoker, i guess. sometime during the summer of 76, underway on nooklear power


how i spent my summer vacation. standing watch in the engineroom upperlevel (that's the diesel gageboard behind me) on the 4th of July, 1976. hell of a way to celebrate the bicentennial. that big son of a bitch next to me is pinky. i'm 5'10". BIG is bigger than pinky, just to put some perspective on the whole thing. gotta love those navy issue birth control glasses. you know why they were called birth control glasses, right? because they were one of the most effective birth control devices known to man. wear them, and conception was highly unlikely, since partners ran away, ran away


how i spent my spring and summer vacation, 1978. on watch in the engineroom, on the sound powered phones. must have been the maneuvering watch, or some evolution. we didn't normally have to wear them. the dude leaning against the gageboard is as big as pinky. we used to joke that we had a 5 man trim party in machinery division alone. i always thought i'd be a big dude on the boats until i got there and found out that m-division alone had 5 guys taller than 6'3" and weighing more than 240 each, with a couple of them topping out closer to 6'5". i was puny by comparison at 5'10" and 165 pounds.


here i am in the damned good humor man suit i had to buy for this inspection, because the navy decided that the traditional blues were no good anymore. what really burns is that i had less than a year left in the navy when they changed uniforms. i'm getting a ComSubPac letter of commendation for the overhaul from the captain. he was the 3rd skipper i served under on the boat. of course, when you spend 6 1/2 years on one boat, you tend to go through captains and engineers. if i really worked at it, i might be able to come up with all of the engineer's names, but i'm not sure. those guys seemed to drop like flies for some reason. there were some outstanding ones, and a couple of forgettable ones too.


i know that the submarine force has changed the way it serves chow since i was in, because i worked on the boats for 15 years after i got out. we had "seatings", where the mess cooks set up the tables, we shuffled in, ate, cleared our mess, and left. then they would repeat the setup, probably for a total of three times, with the stragglers eating as a place cleared during the third seating. i'm on the left in the picture. i used to get a lot of grief because even though i weighed less than 180, i took up two spots because i had big shoulders. this picture was taken during a yard period, just before i got out.

there you go, my little trip down memory lane.