Skimmer Hell

If you're on a sub, and you've heard fabulous tales of how much better life is on a surface ship, just stay tuned. I don't know about the old cruisers, but I've been stationed on a fast attack, a boomer, and a carrier. I honestly thought it couldn't get worse than the fast attack (a mutiny wouldn't have surprised me during one particularly nasty 90 day underway), but I was wrong, wrong, WRONG.

There was a rumor on my first boat that one could "un-volunteer" for subs by giving your fish back to the CO. I don't know if that was true, but my generation joined up after watching Top Gun (where a pilot does just that with his wings), so it sounded plausible. It's funny about that movie; I've never got to fly that airplane and none of the women I met looked remotely like Kelly McGillis, but I somehow assumed that eventually I would. We often ended a round of complaining on watch with a pointed comment about how we were gonna turn in our fish and start living the "good" life.

Here are some of the things I heard, and the reality:
(Rumor) On a carrier, you get a lot more space for your stuff.
(Reality) It's sort of true. You do get a rack (virtually identical to your rack on the boat, except they aren't fooling around with the hasp - it's bulletproof and welded in place), and you also get a small hanging gear locker. But there's a catch - you have to bring your ENTIRE SEABAG everywhere you go. No kidding, expect to get seabag inspections if you are E6 or below. We're talking everything the they gave you in boot camp, including the shower shoes, and it had better be properly stenciled. On the boat, the only people who got seabag inspections were the dirtballs we were trying to "motivate". Berthing is huge open-bay style, also just like bootcamp.

(Rumor) On a carrier, there are so many nucs that you're 10 section in port and 5 section at sea.
(Reality) Buuuuullllllsh*t! We were getting screwed just like any other nucs, only worse. 3 section in port and about the same at sea. But the at-sea schedule is truly messed up; watches are kinda like that crap they try right around ORSE when they're cycling all the sections through for drills, only skimmers do that ALL THE TIME. Watch reliefs are nowhere near when the chow is served, so chow breaks are whatever you can arrange for yourself ahead of time. Plus, just like bootcamp, everyone gets up at the same time in the morning and goes to bed at the same time. You're going to be up all day, even if there's nothing particular for you to be doing.

On the plus side, they used to have people tell us bedtime stories over the 1MC right after lights-out. I liked the chaplain the best, but the CO wasn't bad.

We did a fast cruise while we were still in the yard - unlike the fast cruises you may be used to, none of the non-nucs were there, and most of the nucs mysteriously vanished when not on watch as well.
My first duty day out of the yards was interesting, too. Duty days include mustering in ranks, for inspection, at least twice a day. So I was walking around the hanger deck that morning, looking for my guys, and it seemed like the whole freaking ship was in ranks. But it turned out most of them were people who were restricted on board. My whole time in subs, I saw only one or two guys ever get stuck on board - usually it lasted a few days in some overseas port because of what happened in the LAST port. On the carrier, it looked like a full third of the ship was in hack at any given time.

(Rumor) Rank means a lot more to skimmers than it does to submariners - on a skimmer, you'd be running a division as a second class.
(Reality) Rank has more privileges... for khakis. Chiefs get their own decks, including mess decks, and blueshirt scum need not apply. Officers are the same - their special no-enlisted areas are color-coded (if you can believe this) blue. The only time anyone *wearing* blue better be in a stairwell *colored* blue is to clean it. E6's get head of the line privileges for some stuff, but basically it's just like boot camp everywhere you go.
The nuc chiefs are a little more uptight than I was used to, but basically a nuc is a nuc. It was the non-nucs that drove me crazy. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, just like CCs in boot camp. In addition to random inspections of people and spaces that don't belong to them, they've got no problem ordering you around. One chief sends you to fix a motor, and on the way some other chief, one you've never seen before, "recruits" you to clean something he cares about. That happened ALL THE TIME.

(Rumor) There are women, even female nucs, on a carrier.
(Reality) This is true - I think I saw one female nuc the whole time I was there (not in my division) and maybe ten or eleven overall. When I asked about this, one of the guys who'd been on board for a while said that most women get pregnant within the first few months on board, and then end up getting out. I'd rather do the sea time myself (no patrol lasts 18+ years straight), but to each his/her own.

(Rumor) Carriers are so big they have a television studio and an exchange.
(Reality) True, sort of. The store didn't have much beyond the typical boat crap we used to sell to tourists, and you usually had to wait in line to go in. There were some vending machines as well, which would have been nice if it wasn't all so stale even the seagulls wouldn't eat it.
There were several channels of nonstop movies on the CCTV system, and that's how they did shipwide training (think bad public access shows). No porn, though. The key was to find a compartment with only one exit. If you tape a "wet paint" sign to the hatch before you lock yourself in, you can watch all the TV you want.

Final Thoughts
Carriers are big. But it's not like all that extra space is for the crew - being big just means you have to walk further to do your job. It means you'll be lucky if you know everyone in your own division (let alone every nuc) by name. And it means there's just that much more stuff to field day.

I did like watching the ocean go by, but the view is better from the bridge of a sub. If you have to go to sea as a nuc, a sub is the ONLY way.