Lost?

  Days don't get much slower than today.  We didn't fly.  There wasn't a meeting on the flight schedule.  My inbox stayed mostly empty all day.  We did spend some time ensuring that everything that's not bolted down is fairly well secured in some way.  We are expecting up to 20 foot seas over the next couple days.  The bow of the ship is cleared of all aircraft and those remaining on the flight deck are chained down more than usual.  The hangar bay is packed full.  It's amazing how tightly they can pack aircraft into that cavern in the middle of the ship.  The carrier has four elevators which can fit one or two jets at a time, taking them to or from the flight deck and hangar bay.  The hangar bay extends most of the length of the ship, and most of the width, and is three decks high.  Around the edges of the hangar are a variety of cariovascular workout equipment (bikes, treadmills, ellipticals).  Some groups around the ship gather there to do work-out classes together when there is space available.  The hangar is where most of the major maintenance and inspections are done on the aircraft.  While it may not be as hazardous or noisy as the flight deck, it is often just as busy, with hundreds of sailors and airmen working on their aircraft, preparing them to return to the flight deck. 

   The hangar is sometimes also a convenient way to get from the forward end of the ship to the aft.  Up where the ready rooms are, there are long passageways that cover the length of the "gallery deck" as it is called (the deck just below the flight deck).  However, to provide the necessary structural support for all the aircraft that sit and land on the flight deck, every 10 feet or so there is a thick steel plate that traverses from port to starboard.  The fore/aft passageways pass through these plates (called frames) in oval-cutouts, which start at about 8 inches above the floor up to about 6 ft 6 inches above the floor.  Reading back through my convoluted explanation, I can see that a picture would be much better than my thousand words.  Anyway, these oval cut-outs are referred to as "knee-knockers" - for somewhat obvious reasons.  To get anywhere fore or aft along the O-3 level (another term for this gallery deck), you are high stepping about every six strides.  Only one person can pass through a knee knocker at a time, so this makes for slow going sometimes in passageways where two people can normally pass only with a shift of the shoulders.   Even though this is a pain, it's usually easier than descending three ladders to the hangar, dodging aircraft, then climbing three ladders again back to the O-3 level.  Depends on how far you have to go, and what deck you're starting from.

   For those who care, here's a quick explanation of the whole O-3 thing.  Navy ships identify location whithin the ship using notation called a "tac number."  In Naveese, a "tac" refers to a dash between two numbers.  For instance my stateroom is at 02-62-4 ("oh two tac six two tac four").  The first set of digits is the deck of the ship.  The first deck of a ship that extends from the bow to the stern is referred to as the main deck and is also the 1st deck.  On a carrier, the hangar bay is the 1st deck.  On a cruiser or destroyer, it's the deck you can normally see with outside surfaces from bow to stern.  All decks above the first deck are labelled in increasing number, but with a preceding 0, ie 01, 02, 03.  A carrier goes as high as the 0-10 level, where the control tower sits.  The flight deck is the 0-4 level.  Below the main deck, they are simply labeled in increasing order, 2, 3, 4, etc, going down.  The lowest deck I've ever been down to is the 4th deck.  I'm pretty sure somewhere down on the 7th or 8th deck there are rice patties and chicken coops from stem to stern.

   The second number in the tac number is the frame, or how far between the bow and stern the space is.  The bow is frame 0 and the fantail (or stern-- back end) is around frame 250.  As you can see from this, my room is relatively close to the bow.

  The third number describes the relative distance from the centerline of the ship.  Even numbers are on the port side, odd numbers are on the starboard side.  A space through which the centerline passes would be labeled 0.  The first space outboard from that space on the starboard side would be labeled 1.  The  next space outboard on the starboard side (at that frame) would be labeled 3, and so on.  The next space outboard on the port side would be 2.  So you can see that my room is on the port side, and is the 3rd space from the centerline (0, 2, 4).

   Using this tac notation, you can tell where you are on the ship at any time, and can use it to find your way around the ship--usually.  Finding the right ladder or the right passage to get to the space you're looking for is not always easy.  Those new to the ship frequently get lost, but that's often the best way to find other useful places that you weren't looking for.  That's how I found the barber shop a few months ago.  As long as you can find your rack, the head, a place to eat, and where you're supposed to work, that's all that matters.  In time, we all find our way to the gyms, the ship's stores (2 of them), the barber shop, the post office, or the IT office to reset a password (down on the 4th deck).