At PD, the boat pitched and rolled violently, “Quartermaster, do you have a fix?”
“Aye.”
“Very well, make your depth 400 feet, 5 degree down bubble.”
“400 feet aye – make your depth 400 feet, maintain 5 degrees.”
“Seas are rising, last look shows, hmmm, I’ll call it ‘state 6’ let’s go under this. It’s getting ugly. Down scope.”
The movement of the ship lessened slightly as we went deeper, below the storm. I picked up my coffee and moved aft through upper level ops. I took the ladder outside ESM down to the crews mess, refilled my cup and sat down. I watched Beast and Uncle Jerry play a few hands of hearts and felt the boat level off at 400’.
For the next three days we stayed deep, only sneaking back to the turbulence of periscope depth in order to catch the periodic broadcast. We waited for the weather to abate. There was no surface traffic to speak of, no sonar contacts, the seas were too heavy.
tnkerr-Writing Prompts and Practice 