2 Comments:

At 7:44 PM,  bothenook said...

our doc was the after anchor watch coming into port following a long underway. he was sitting on the after capstan, manning the phones. as he stood up to stretch, he slipped on the deck goop you accumulate when submerged for 4 months, slid along the aft turtleback, and went between the two screws, almost getting chopped into hamburger, and almost getting killed bouncing off of the rudder. the first thing anyone noticed was that the extra long phone cord was stretched taut, with a big orange bubble following the boat in its wake. the cord finally pulled out of the headset, allowing doc to get his head above water. the tug pulled along side, and he rode the rest of the way to mare island wrapped in a blanket. the ood was a fast thinker, because usually on a man overboard, you take a hard port or starboard turn to retrieve the poor swabbie bobbing away in the drink. if we had turned even a little, the cord would have been caught up in the screws, probably ending our relationship with one hospital corpsman. instead, he rang up all stop and passed the word to the throttleman to stop the screws. very fast thinker.
doc hendrix, where ever you are tonight, i raise my beer to you. the only man to actually have skied behind our submarine.
imagine the rash of cartoons that generated. wish i still had one, i'd scan it and post it to the blog.

 

At 5:03 AM,  WillyShake said...

I am so relieved and happy for him that he was ok! And you see--there it is again, that typical submariner attitude that is all business and quick-thinking one minute and "smokin' and jokin'" the next! Amazing.

 

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