Boat Dreams

I know there's nothing more boring than listening to a story about someone else's dream, but I'm gonna write about one I had anyway. First, some background...

At work this week, I was almost late for passdown because I had to perform MRC PM D-1R; for various reasons, it's important in my civilian job to get that taken care of whenever you can if you think you might have to "use the facilities" anytime soon, 'cause otherwise it takes several minutes (involving some not insignificant contortions to get "un-bunny-suited") to get to where you need to go; even more if you can't walk correctly because of... well, you know. Anyway, this got me to thinking of one of my old Engineers on my first boat. He didn't stand OOD very often, but when he did, I'd get called at least 90% of the time within the first 10 minutes of his watch to come give him a "short relief". I never liked taking the watch without a complete tour, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Eventually, whenever I saw that he was on the OOD watchbill, I'd end up touring at the same time he did, and following him up to Control.

Which brings me to the subject of my dream I had back then. I think one of the reasons why I didn't like to give "short reliefs" as OOD without a decent turnover was that I had a dream during the time when I was working on my ship's quals where I found myself in the Control Room of the the good ship Topeka, but didn't know why I was there. Soon, it became obvious that I was the Officer of the Deck, but I didn't know our course, speed, depth, or position. I casually went over to the Chart Table to see where we were, but I couldn't quite see it. Same thing when I went to look at the SCP; I couldn't quite see what our course or speed were, and I sure didn't want to make people think I didn't know what was going on. Suddenly, I came to the most shocking realization of all -- I didn't even know if we were surfaced or submerged. I woke up instantly, in a cold sweat. I've never forgotten that dream.

So do any of you have dreams about submarining that you'd be willing to share?