003 - “Drills”
17FEB2020 - There is nothing quite like standing a drill set in Maneuvering. You’re just at your panel with a sick feeling in your stomach knowing something is about to go wrong. Is ERLL about to get a positive turbidity? Is the AEA going to discover a fire during his rove? Is the Captain himself going to meander back to the aft end of the ship to scram out the plant? Who knows. You just have to trust that you’ve practiced enough to know what indications you should be looking for.
When that alarm finally does come in, though, Maneuvering turns from a metal box full of half-asleep submariners to a cacophonous center for casualty response. To the untrained eye (and fresh JOs), it is a truly terrifying experience. The Electrical Operator is doing Hyman-knows-what to the electric plant and juggling phone communications from pure muscle memory. The Throttleman is doing their best to keep the status board up to date, potentially manning phones, and ensuring that the boat keeps moving. The Reactor Operator… well, he does stuff sometimes I guess.
Your first couple of drill sets are going to be painful. There’s a world of difference between writing immediate actions on a whiteboard and actually executing what those actions mean. For fresh EOOWs (both priors and non-priors alike), it is way more difficult than expected to keep up with everything your watchstanders are doing in the books. Just pray that there isn’t a Naval Reactors monitor around when you inevitably drop all the Reactor Plant Manuals off your desk.