If you hadn't figured it out by now, I am soooooo not a morning person. It's even worse when I am exhausted and then only get 2 hours of sleep. Not cool. Tuesday night I ended up staying on the boat for the simple fact that it was 9:30 pm before I even got my work done. Wednesday morning was the first day of RFO. Here is how it went down:
0700 Be on the boat0800 RFO shows up
0900 PT Test (run 1.5 miles, push ups & sit ups)
1030 (ish) Gear inspection
1100 (ish) Written test
1200 Lunch (after shower)
1300 Finally start my duty (that's 1:00 pm to you non-military folks)
I was suppose to relieve the watch at 0745 but couldn't because of all the shit I had to do in the morning. Of course that's not even the start of it, but I lost track of time. I was busting my ass all day. I was suppose to be asleep at 4:00 pm but didn't manage to lay down until 7:00 pm. I was up at 11:00 pm to stand my part of the watch until 5:45 the next morning. That was rough. I was so tired. I could barely keep my eyes open.
At 6 I was able to go back to bed. I didn't take a shower or even take my uniform off. I crawled in an passed out. Taking a shower would have decreased my time for sleep as would taking my uniform off (cause I would have to put it right back on). Yeah I know, that's disgusting but seriously, I was exhausted and I knew I would be sweating my ass off in a couple of hours running drills for the rest of the day. So why take a shower just to get all sweaty again in a couple of hours.
I knew I was exhausted by the dream I had. (and just because I had a dream doesn't mean I got a good rest). I will brief you on it, I can't really describe it all just because you kinda have to know the people and be around me to understand it all. That and the exact details aren't needed to understand.
It started off on the boat...go figure. We were out in the ocean getting ready to put someone in tow. The line started to take off in the water and I looked over the side to see what was going on. There was a huge killer whale under our boat. When I say huge I mean larger than our cutter and it's 154 feet. Any way we started to follow it and it led us through some channel with a bunch of trees sunken just below where the boat went. You could see the killer whales swimming through them and just playing around us (kinda like dolphins). I felt that they were just leading us into some kind of trap. We some how got one on board and we were going to let it go when my boss wanted me to go with it to see where it would go. So the next thing I know is that I have my arms wrapped around it's top fin and we go diving through the water. (that part was kinda cool). I some how make it onto an island and my boss radios me and tells "I need you to write this down" Now I am on a stranded island soaking wet with nothing but clothes on an a radio. I told him "Chief I can't" and then he replies again "I NEED YOU TO WRITE THIS DOWN" I finally respond (in a typical me fashion) "I CAN'T FUCKING WRITE ANYTHING DOWN! WHAT THE FUCK AM I TO WRITE ON AND WITH WHAT!" Haha then the dream went off into another direction.
Yeah, I was exhausted. Then I had to deal with day 2 of RFO. We did drills at the pier and drills underway. I am struggling to stay awake the whole time. At one point I started to fall asleep on the mess deck and the XO asked if I was ok and started laughing. Nice. I was suppose to drive the small boat and do drills on that but there was a huge discussion on the bridge as to whether or not I should. Now I have had a redbull and a 5 hour energy at this point, and multiple cans of pop. My boss said "NO. She is exhausted and fatigued, I am putting my foot down and saying no she doesn't go." I could have gone but things might not have been pretty. After a few "discussions" with my boss and the XO, CO and the RFO team, it was decided that I didn't need to go and that we won't be penalized for not having all the coxswains go. Whew. I went to my rack and layed down for about 30 minutes.
But things went well. We had our de-brief with the RFO team and they said we did awesome. They haven't seen anybody do as well as we did in just a short amount of time and building everything up from the ground. The test that we took were the highest they had seen in a while (which we didn't study for by they way). There were alot of things we got a perfect score in and only a couple that we didn't get perfect but were still good on. Hell yeah!
Needless to say that I am writing all of this today because I was too exhausted to write anything yesterday evening when I got home. Another great tid bit is that we were suppose to get underway on Monday for our first patrol but because of the storm/hurricane we get to leave on Saturday now. So much for a break. Haha.
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