3 By Sea

Another early day. We started off with a 1K bay swim again this morning. There’s nothing like a good, swift kick first thing in the morning to get the day going. Especially when that kick is in some nasty, mucky bay. The upside to the swim this morning is that I was able to make the required time this morning. Actually, I did better than my last time by over two minutes! So, I’ve got that going for me.

The rest of the day we spent in the classroom getting ready to start our pool week.

The highlight of my morning tomorrow will be being placed in a decompression chamber and getting pressure tested. Most folks get this done before they ever get to school, but my service is a bit smaller and we just wait until we get here.

We have one more test tomorrow, and we’ll start in the pool later in the afternoon.

Easy day.

As I mentioned yesterday, we started the day off right with another bay swim. It wasn’t too bad today. And although my time improved only minimally (22:35 as opposed to 22:45 yesterday) I felt better today.  And as luck would have it, we get to try again in the morning. And most likely the morning after that too. So, we’ll have plents of chances.

Immediately following the swim, we started with some of the great PT exercises that everyone who has ever been to this school knows and loves. Flutter kicks, push-ups, mountain climbers. But we got a new twist. We filled our masks up with bay water and did all exercises. And if it spilled, or more often than not, got snorted up your nose and down your throat, you immediately had to fill it back up. We did this for probably and hour and a half. You try keeping your feet 6 inches off the ground for an hour or so and see how it goes. Not a great time. I did manage to experience my breakfast a second time, so I guess every cloud and all that.

Today marked the first day of a new phase in training. We’re actually going to start wearing tanks on Thursday and Friday. We’re into the pool phase. This will entail a whole new kind of fun. More as it comes.

Today was full of fun and excitement. We started off with a second PT test at 0600. Since not everyone passed the test last Monday, everyone failed. When we finished the PT test, we had a short break to shower before the first written test.

Two hours, 76 questions and a headache. I’ve spent the last four days studying for this test. The test turned out to be a mixed bag of questions. Some seemed like freebies and some were misleading and almost impossible to answer. All in all, the class as a whole did fairly well. Only one shipmate failed the exam, but he will be allowed to re-test tomorrow.  After the test, we were informed that we would have another bay swim after lunch. And we did.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the bay swim is a 1000 meter swim in, you guessed it, the bay. These are greuling for most and hard for all. The minimum passing time is 22 minutes. I, unfortunately, did not pass today. My time was 22:45 and I managed to get a horrible cramp in my left calf muscle. It still hurts.

And the greatest news is that we will repeat the bay swim at 0600 Tuesday morning. So I’m trying to rest and let the muscles recover.

One of the major training objectives while here is a 1K open water swim. We do it in the bay, hence “bay swim.” There is a time limit of :22 (mins) to complete the swim. To make the :22 you have to “kick and breathe” as one instructor put it this morning. That’s all. Kick. Breathe. 22 minutes of hurt. Of the 19 people left in the class as of today, four passed the bay swim this morning. I was not one of the four.

Once we got out of the water, we had to rinse our equipment off. So, like the pool deck yesterday, we were not moving fast enough so we ended up in the lean and rest. And stayed there for 5-6 minutes. Then the push-ups started and kept going until someone couldn’t do another push up. So we stayed in the lean and rest while the instructors informed us of a few things. This information was mostly about how this is a voluntary school, we didn’t have to do the push-ups, we can leave whenever we wanted to, we shouldn’t rest with our knees on the deck. Remember, we’re in the lean and rest the whole time. So then the push-ups started again. And again, someone in the group could complete all the push-ups so we stopped (in the lean and rest) and were given some more information. Finally, we only had to do one push up to be done. One long, four count push-up. Even this took a couple of attempts to get completed. Then, the flutter kicks started. This went about the same as the push ups.

Once we were done, we stowed our gear, showered and went to more classes on diving related illness.

The school has Thursday and Friday off for the holiday and therefore, we have the next two days off.

Easy day.

So we will continue to do these swim (3 or 4 a week) until everyone passes. Even then we may do more if the instructors want us to do more. All in all

I am a day late with this post, but I was just a bit too tired to write up how the day went. Now, I know what you’re thinking. What is MFS? And just to be clear, it is not Mother Fucking SCUBA. Today we got into the water to do our drown proofing. Basically, you do two survival floats. The first one is done with your feet tired with a rope. Everyone is herded together towards the middle of the pool and you must bob up and down. You can not tread water and you can only take one breath at a time. The second survival float is basically the same except that now your hand are bound behind your back. We actaully lost a shipmate during this evolution. DOR.

Next we moved to the shallow end. But before we could begin the next portion of the training, the instructors wanted to let us know that needed to move a bit faster. So we did some push-ups on the pool deck. And some half push-ups and a little lean and rest. Once we got back in the pool, we were immediately instructed to get back out. And basically repeated the above push-ups, half push-ups and lean and rest. Then, back in the water.

Now, I still haven’t clarified the MFS yet. As part of the in water familiarization, we have to demonstrate a certain level of comfort and proficiency with several peices of equipemtn. Namely the mask, fins and snorkel. So this was the next portion of the day. We had to demonstrate the ability to breath through a snorkel, clear a flooded snorkel, porpoise with fins and a snorkel and clear a flooded mask. We also had to retrieve a mask and snorkel from a depth of 12-14ft and clear the mask on the bottom of the pool then clear the snorkel on the surface.

When we finished, we did 90 eight count body builders on the pool deck. That was just insane. I still hurt from those.

We still had a few more hours in the classroom working on diving schedule and diving related illnesses.

Well, today was the first real day of school. By real day  I mean the type of day  you’re told to expect before coming here. It started with a wake up well before 5 am. The class made the decision to skip breakfast and get right down to the initial PT test. Big mistake as it turns out. We all could have used the fuel.

The temp in PCB this morning was a less than warm 38 degrees. So, of course we all stripped down to UDTs and went for a swim, followed by push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and a 1.5 mile run in wet shorts. We were able to put sweats on over the top of the wet stuff, but since we didn’t towel off… It was cold. The air hurt a bit to breath in, especially around 1.25 mile mark. In fact, my chest still hurts a bit.

After we completed the required test, the instructors wanted to let us know that our motivation needed to be improved. And our teamwork. And our leadership. And __________ (insert desired trait here). So we ran. And did eight count body builders. And ran. We also did push-ups. But not a whole lot of push-ups. In fact we mostly stayed in the half down (or half up if your that kind of person) position.  Don’t knock it ’til ya’ tried it friends. Believe me, you’d rather be doing push ups. The we managed to find a big sand pit and did some fireman carrys, some buddy drags. Back and forth. Back and forth. I eventually puked. Not much. Just some nasty liquid since we hadn’t eaten breakfast. So I guess there was an upside of being hungry and having low blood sugar. You don’t puke much.

We spent the rest of the day in a classroom learning about all the basic physics involved with diving. Wow. All sorts of cool things to stuff your brain. As I mentioned in the previous post, this was a lot of stuff about gas laws and how they relate to diving.

We then took a short brake to do about 60 eight count body builders. Six zero.

That says it all.

As promised. I will be bogging about my experiences in Florida while I become a military diver.

Today was completely an admin day. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. As anyone who has ever been to a DMV knows, there is never a shortage of forms to fill out when dealing with the government. Now multiply that by 8.2 for any sort of military training. Then add five if there is any sort of dangerous situation involved.

That was one of the refreshing things about the whole indoctrination process today. It was stressed to the entire class today that military diving is a dangerous endeavor. And while some of the dangers can be mitigated, it does not profit the diver or the service to eliminate every single risk. In fact, if you want to dive at all, civilian or military, you accept a certain amount of risk.

We did get a 102 page study guide that includes memorizing Boyle’s Law , Charles/ Guy-Lussac’s Law,Dalton’s Law and Henry’s Law. We have to know these items verbatim.

We have our PT test on Monday. Some swimming, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and a 1.5 mile timed run. That’s just to get into the school.

Anyway, more later.