SnWnMe
Enlightened
Situation: For President's Day, the Navy issued a directive on Thursday night requiring fleet units to string up all those colorful signaling flags from stem, over the mast, to stern. A good two to three hour job in daylight for a weekend strength crew under supervision by one expert.
Problem: One of our officers misinterprets the directive and does not pass it along to the weekend crew's worklist. When we, the gallant, can do Sunday weekend section finally sorted it out, it was 1600, overcast and cold.
Now in the Navy, you can't just string the flags together, have a few motivated hands climb the mast and hoist everything up. There is an SOP that must be followed before anyone can climb up. Topside systems must be shutdown or placed on standby, every ship on the pier must be notified (so they don't microwave the aloft sailors to death) and every person who is to climb the mast must be qualified in writing to do so. All these preparations took another 45 minutes so as it was we had about 45 minutes of daylight left before we had to work outside a dark ship handling gear that can tangle or ensnare the unwary.
Finally it was dark and the aloft sailors had one light between them. I had them come down and gave them two of my three lights (NTs). Both have bezel mounted clips and so the sailors could wear them on the bills of their ballcaps so they can use both hands for their work. A quick runthrough of how to use the lights and they were aloft again. I kept the RA Twisty and used that to illuminate the hands working on heaving the cables and stringing the flags on the main deck.
Throughout the time we were working many hands commented on how bright the RA was. One aloft hand verified that I was able to illuminate the work area on the top of the mast while I was standing on the main deck. A few said they will probably get one until they found out how much it was :devil:. Those who were turned off by the price I referred to Surefire 6PLs, Fenix and Inovas.
Anyhoo, after the work was done the men who were aloft all wanted to get Novatacs. While we were hanging out on the main deck after the work was done I showed them the strobe mode and sure enough, them crazy kids started dancing.
I always get teased about being a gear ***** at work but last night no one complained that I had three powerful lights with me lovecpf
Problem: One of our officers misinterprets the directive and does not pass it along to the weekend crew's worklist. When we, the gallant, can do Sunday weekend section finally sorted it out, it was 1600, overcast and cold.
Now in the Navy, you can't just string the flags together, have a few motivated hands climb the mast and hoist everything up. There is an SOP that must be followed before anyone can climb up. Topside systems must be shutdown or placed on standby, every ship on the pier must be notified (so they don't microwave the aloft sailors to death) and every person who is to climb the mast must be qualified in writing to do so. All these preparations took another 45 minutes so as it was we had about 45 minutes of daylight left before we had to work outside a dark ship handling gear that can tangle or ensnare the unwary.
Finally it was dark and the aloft sailors had one light between them. I had them come down and gave them two of my three lights (NTs). Both have bezel mounted clips and so the sailors could wear them on the bills of their ballcaps so they can use both hands for their work. A quick runthrough of how to use the lights and they were aloft again. I kept the RA Twisty and used that to illuminate the hands working on heaving the cables and stringing the flags on the main deck.
Throughout the time we were working many hands commented on how bright the RA was. One aloft hand verified that I was able to illuminate the work area on the top of the mast while I was standing on the main deck. A few said they will probably get one until they found out how much it was :devil:. Those who were turned off by the price I referred to Surefire 6PLs, Fenix and Inovas.
Anyhoo, after the work was done the men who were aloft all wanted to get Novatacs. While we were hanging out on the main deck after the work was done I showed them the strobe mode and sure enough, them crazy kids started dancing.
I always get teased about being a gear ***** at work but last night no one complained that I had three powerful lights with me lovecpf
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