The time had come for me to finally put all the sub qual crap behind
me. It involved going around and getting signatures on a 4 page
“qual card.” I had finally gotten all the requisite signatures and
was ready to go to my board. A board usually lasts an hour at the
most; mine lasted two fucking hours! It was okay though, because I
had gotten to be good friends in some capacity with all three board
members. They all liked me. The chief was a newly appointed one
that I had bought a few drinks for his wife at the bar. Not because
she was hot, but because I wanted to return a favor to him. MobyDick
was the non-chief, a good-guy all around. And the officer was one of
the dudes I played golf with at Turtle Bay that day of the EDMC’s
birthday. He was buying us beers and we got shitfaced, an overall
good time.
I passed, got some look ups, as was customary. It’s tough to get
everything right. MobyDick was serious when he said, “I almost
failed you because you didn’t know where the Shore Power bus was.” I
didn’t care, I was a mechanic. They asked me at the very end of the
board. They sent me out to the p-way to discuss, and then called me
back in. “Petty Officer Fish; do you think you deserve to be
qualified in submarines?” I answered without hesitation, “Yeah. I
do.” That was an easy one. All the bullshit I had put up with up to
that point, it would have been a shame to give up now.
I’d finally qualified. It felt good. That meant that I could not longer be
DINQ for ship’s quals. It’s supposed to take about a year. I had
reported to the boat in August of the previous year, so I was
obviously behind the curve, hence my 3 DRBs. But now that it was
over, I could keep the COB off my ass and focus on my Engineering
Department quals.
At the time we were underway for Pre-Overseas Movement certification,
one of the hoops your boat has to jump through before heading out on
deployment. This meant that the time to go on deployment was rapidly
approaching. Also, one of my buddies, Darko went to mast and got
knocked down in rank one paygrade the same day I passed my SS board.
Darko and I would go to mast together in the 2005 shipyard period.
An incident that was my first mast of two and his third, which led to
him being kicked out of the Navy. I don’t recall what this incident
was.
Negative Reactivity 
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