My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.

I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.

The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.

That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.

We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.

The experience was both scary and exhilarating.

Predictability is so much more important than being nice. Just follow the rules.

Last week, I got a 3 day ban from Reddit. The next day it turned into a permanent ban. Reddit claimed that it was due to a comment made about a video, showing a coach pull the ponytail of one of the girls on his team. While I don’t recall what my comment was, as the father of a HS girl who plays sports, it bothered me, but as a man in his 50s, who played football in the 1980s, who periodically got his ass kicked by his coach, when he screwed up, it didn’t bother me enough to say anything terrible. Of course, they deleted the post, and refused to elaborate. I’ve been supportive of Luigi, and have heard that Reddit was coming after Luigi supporters, so I thought that could be the real reason. Who really knows?