Navy Life

I had recently been asked to explain what shore duty is.  The navy is a little unique in how things are set up.  There is Sea Duty and then there is Shore Duty.

Sea Duty means they are gone all the time.  And I do mean all the time.  Jay was only home for a month or two each year in the last 6 1/2 years.  Between under ways and deployments he was always out to sea.  Sea Duty is being attached to a ship.  Jay did 2 sea duties back to back.  We did 4 years on one ship and the another two on the other.  This meant countless under ways and 4 deployments.  The under ways were to prepare for the actual deployment as well as doing various inspections for readiness of the ship and it's crew.    A big difference between the Navy and the other branches in the military is when a ship deploys they are gone until the deployment is over.  A sailor can't come home when a baby is born, they don't get to skype while on the ship, e-mail and a few phone calls is all the family back home can really expect.  We're lucky if we can skype when they hit a port in a foreign country, which isn't always a guarantee of happening.  When a ship goes out they will be gone anywhere from 4 months up to 13 months depending on the ship and deployment time line.  Some ships will get their deployments extended and that is never fun, after personally having this happen during our 3rd deployment I never want to experience that again though the chances are it will.  Sea duty also means duty days.  Depending on the sailor's job/department on the ship depends on what type of duty day rotation they have.  Jay always had 8 day rotations.  Duty days are the one day a week where a sailor has to stay on the ship for 24 hours.  They don't leave unless there is an emergency.  They usually have to stand watches of some sort and do a lot of cleaning as well as their normal work.  Duty days are not always fun, but it does come with the job.

Shore duty is the other part of the navy.  There are jobs on the shore side of life such as: recruiter, fixing things, being an instructor, and various other jobs that mean a sailor is home and doesn't have to deal with/worry about deployments.  Jay gets to be an instructor here in a few months once he is done with his school that he is finishing up and instructor school.  He's is loving life right now.  He loves that he's getting to learn networking stuff and that he gets to teach it here soon.  He loves that he has every weekend and holiday with us after 6 years of missing much of both of those events.  He loves that we don't have duty days at all.  It is a normal job, military style.  Not all shore duties escape duty days, but Jay's job is one that does and we're loving every moment of it.