http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-North-Sea.html

This...and I wasn't gay helped my decision.


Seriously, no thanks, that ride for 10-15 minutes would be fun, but days like that? No thanks!

I couldn't handle that either, there was just a Caribbean Cruise ship that left NJ and was rocked by Hurricane force winds because the Capt didn't pay attention enough to the weather

LINK

NO THANKS

Watching ships in rough seas gives me the willies. Even worse than when the Village People tried recruiting me in that music video.

Especially cruise ships. They are floating hotels with unnaturally high centers of gravity. A real ocean going ship like a liner or a warship would is fine, cruise ships truly suck. I did it once and never again.

Not too sure I'd have mentioned that one...

Remember, our warships are faster and more maneuverable than a cruise ship, and will use those traits to avoid crazy rough seas like that. And seriously, you will never, ever sleep better than when you have the ship rocking you to sleep.

But, I guess not everybody literally has the stomach for that kind of manly lifestyle.

The post made me think of this, I know there's got to be a certain amount of movement in a ships structure but this would scare the crap out of me.

One of our neighbours when I was a kid served on a type VII C U-Boat during WW2. He had a couple of photographs taken during a storm on the Atlantic. Absolutely unbelievable. 4 or 5 men standing in a "bathtub" in 30m waves.

Typhoon Cobra did what the Japanese were not able to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Cobra

I think a requirement for anyone to join the Navy, any Navy in any country, is they need to be able to swim.

I've had friends in High School who couldn't even float to the surface that went into the U.S. Navy.

Technically if you jump into the water, whether it's a lake or river or pond, etc and it's deep enough for you not to be able to stand in it, you should float back up with your head above water.

Even if you can't swim, anyone can float in it with their head above water and as long as you paddle/wade your arms and kick your feet from time to time, you won't sink.

Trust me when I said I had friends in High School who couldn't even make it past an entire 12-week quarter of Natatorium classes because as soon as they jumped into the 10 feet deep Olympic size swimming pool head first or feet first, they'd sink to the bottom.

No matter what amount of kicking or paddling they did, their heads would not come up above the water line.

You can imagine how surprised some of us were when we heard they joined the U.S. Navy.

Two of them actually went on to become pilots on Aircraft Carriers.

I don't know what they flew though. Since they went straight into the U.S. Navy from High School without a college degree, I doubt they flew jet fighters.

Don't you need a 4 year college degree before you can be chosen for the U.S. Navy fighter pilot training?

This was in 1982. Not sure what the requirements were.

But those USMC recruits in An Officer and a Gentleman were training to be Naval Aviators. Except for that one Emiliano Della Serra guy, the rest didn't look like they had a 4 year college degree.

I can't swim for crap; the Navy and Marines would take me without question. I'm fairly certain between life jackets and forcing you to learn they'd figure it out

A teacher I had in high school was a US Navy veteran of WWII. He told the story of how he told his superiors in basic training that he couldn't swim, figuring the swim training would be any easy week or so. So they put him in the swim course and he pretends he can't swim for a day or so of traing until one evening one of his trainers walks into the building where the indoor training pool was to catch him in mid dive off the high board.

It does seem logical, but I look at it this way: How likely is it that even people who can swim are likely to survive if swept overboard or if the ship sunk at sea?

I taught myself how to swim at around 4 years old when I realized I could tread water and dog paddle in the deep end of the pool as well as the shallow end- I couldn't touch the bottom at either end- it was no different either way.

Once in a while I'll scuba dive in the open ocean, and I feel much safer below the surface of the water than at the surface- it's much rougher at the surface, it's nothing like an Olympic swimming pool. If I didn't know a trick such as turning my pants into a life preserver, I probably wouldn't last too long treading water in the open ocean with large swells sending salt water down my throat and eventually pushing me further and further underwater as I tired out and drowned, that is, if hypothermia didn't start speeding up the process first.

I figure things like these have already been calculated by any leadership and they've coldly calculated it really isn't that much of a concern for the few sailors that will wind up drowning in the bigger scheme of things.

In sum, I don't think it makes much difference. Statistically, it's all more or less the same, the one or two odd exceptions won't disprove the rule, that is to say, someone that can swim will probably be lost anyway in the time it takes for them to realize someone is missing at headcount and they begin looking for them in the expanse of ocean.

our 180 foot buoy tender was a round bottom ship, which made for lots of rolling in Lake Superior storms. The waves on the great lakes are closer together so many ocean going vessels were a rougher ride than the "lakers" which were designed for that fact. Manning the helm is a lot more work in a storm just to keep the ship on something close to your bearing and hopefully soften the effects with a bit of skill.

If you join and don't know how to swim, they teach you in Boot Camp. We had about a dozen folks from my division who were going daily for the first two weeks for swimming lessons.

At the end of boot camp, there's a 24 hour long evolution called "Battlestations," that's supposed to be a simulation of being out to sea in combat. It's made up of several events, including repelling boarders, fighting fires and flooding, handling lines to get a ship underway, and eventually simulating abandoning ship, complete with a jump from the high platform at the RTC pool, and with SEALs pretending to be "sharks," because they're SEALs and need the entertainment. So yes, you have to swim to be in the Navy.

Additionally, there's water survival training, i.e. how to turn a working uniform into a flotation device in the event you fall overboard (because let's face it, with those incredibly stupid camouflage costumes, the lookouts are going to have a hard time seeing you anyway). I've heard stories of sailors being lost at sea and recovered, alive, three or four days after they fell over the side.

However, as somebody who worked in the bottom of the ship, we morbidly joked that we had no need for survival training or the abandon ship drills (which are also conducted periodically shipwide), because if the ship was being abandoned, we were probably all dead or about to die anyway.

Yea, you aren't escaping that kind of force:

https://youtu.be/qi5Dy_QhL50?t=2491

The important time is about 41:30 and goes for about a minute.

Even expert swimmers can drown, even though that might be the case that they can be the ones who are most overconfident in their abilities. Since the dead don't talk, it might be difficult to determine why it happens.

From memory, I usually recall more instances of people never being found again than found and rescued- sure it does happen, but either the negative news tends to get remembered more, or I can only think anecdotally- but enough anecdotes start forming the basis of a rule of thumb.

I remember the first time I went scuba diving out far enough from land that there would be no chance of swimming back on my own, the sea sickness at the surface floating at the surface of the water was almost too much, I was barfing and couldn't get my snorkel out and my regulator on quick enough to dive and get away from the surface. Never felt the same way like that as I spent so much time in the pool and never experienced that before. Learning to swim in pools all my life just gave me the basics, I think swimming in order to survive in open ocean pretty much requires training in the open ocean that swimming in pools doesn't replicate.

Dying at sea in a warship is a pretty horrifying proposition.
Chances are you succumb to fire or smoke. Or have some piece of steel equipment take you out or pin you down. Lastly, and most likely, you get trapped below decks. If you are lucky, you get blown to kingdom come.

Drowning in the open sea because you cant swim is probably pretty far down on the list of possibles after death by exposure. Most guys below decks in combat know they are not getting out and yet do their job anyway.

But other than that, you are guaranteed three hots and a cot.

I am deeply respectful of sailors of all stripes, as they do something I simply won't do myself.

I've a profound dislike of the ocean for some reason - not a fear, exactly, but more of a "oh, heck no!" sort of aversion.

As a soldier I could always duck and dig in. Not so with sailors.