Greg said:
So, what do submariners do for fun excitement when not working? What sorts of hobbies, crafts, etc. to keep them busy. They can't be watching HGTV, can they?
Well, there we were at periscope depth this one sunny day when we saw a sailboat with an all-girl crew who...
Oh, you mean when we're offwatch. Lemme shift gears here.
Sleeping is a tremendously popular activity in high demand and short supply, especially if the CO2 level is up and O2 is low (but within specs). Eating runs a close second (meals every six hours, ice cream machine chugging all day long). Movies are obsessive and more than one crew has worn out cinematic works of art like Patrick Swayze's "Road House" or the submarine force classic "Highlander". (I mean "obsessive" in the sense that some watch teams can still recite 90 minutes of dialogue to each other from movies that haven't been in circulation since the 1980s.) Then there's Friday Night Pizza, which combines elements of all of the above.
The crew's mess was a good place to review statistical probability with poker or cribbage or backgammon. Chess was popular sometimes, other times not so much. Laptops and video games were starting to show up in the early 90s. One or two guys could play a tolerable guitar. One audiophile used to bring his nature cassettes/CDs onboard, pop them into the messdecks player, and have the forest sounds twittering away when people would walk in for a cup of coffee. A crowd would gather to watch the double-take expressions (hey, best show in town). Others would tape hours of radio or TV while they were ashore and loop it "live" while underway. Budding artists were popular, especially if they could draw caricatures of various supervisors. Pranks were common, the more complicated and long-running the better. The wardroom was usually busy with professional discussions (no, really, good-nuke stuff) or meetings or the XO's business.
One division smuggled oranges & Tang out of the mess decks and fabricated a still behind the locked door of their watchstanding space. ("Gee, I don't know, that doesn't seem possible. What's it smell like to you?") I understand their first batch was just about ready for production ramp-up when the still broke free of its moorings during a large angle and made more of a splash (so to speak) than they'd intended. It turned out to be a wonderful bilge cleaner.
The truth is that most submariners are standing three-section watch (those who aren't port & stbd) and too busy for much personal time. After a six-hour watch you spend another four-six hours on post-watch reconstruction (writing the mission report, drawing the track of what you wish really happened, and gathering all the evidence into a neat package), preparing/executing/critiquing drills, catching up on your admin, and preparing/attending/giving training. Then you realize that you're behind on your next qualification and will be in deep kimchee with the boss if you don't complete at least one signature in the next 12 hours. If life really sucks then you had six hours of midwatch, spent a morning with ship's drills, and spent the afternoon getting caught up before your evening watch. Maybe you even got a nap before you took that watch. If life sucks like a wind tunnel then your ragged gear's broke and you're up all night trying to fix it while supervisors hover over your shoulders offering helpful suggestions.
I spent a 32-month division-officer tour being a good nuke. Even when I was reading in my rack it was a reactor plant manual or a naval warfare publication. (The upside is that I quickly fell asleep.) As a department head, when I finally finished qualification for command after eight years of study, I "celebrated" by kicking back in my rack with the latest Stephen King novel-- the first unofficial publication that I'd ever read on a submarine. An hour later I was back on watch and back at work.
If I'd known how to surf back then I wouldn't have had the discipline to show up for work.