MM2(E-5) Nuclear Machinists Mate, USS Enterprise 98-03. I’ll give the out to sea stuff since the in port stuff was basically just a job with some extra BS and less free time.
Out to sea was, for us, rather a relief. There is remarkably little work that can be done at sea on an operating propulsion plant, so basically we had no workdays most of the time. We usually did our maintenance items while on watch.
Watches were most times on a 4 & 8 cycle, 4 on, 8 off. We had 5 watches to man though, and usually 20-25 people, so only the junior watches actually had to be on 4&8s, the senior guys usually had one watch a day.
Workdays at sea, when we had them(newbs usually did for at least a half day, cleaning and such) ran from 6am to maybe noon. Occasionally longer, but quite often shorter.
This left us with a remarkable amount of free time to fill. Some of it(and occasionally much of it) was filled through extra duties. One petty officer was in charge of maintaining training records, another in charge of damage control preparedness, one was the assistant boss, someone doing maintenance scheduling, gauge calibration(over 1000 gauges in one engine room >_< ), lead mechanic, etc. Actually, lead mechanic wasn’t really an official position. I just got dubbed that because I had a knack for fixing machinery and was placed in charge of every major overhaul/rebuild, and not given other extra duties. Did pull a few 30 hour + days though, especially if a mission critical component failed.
On top of those duties, and normal everyday work, you were also expected to get qualified on each of the watchstanding positions, a feat which could and did take over a year for many, involving memorizing a dozen different systems, learning immediate actions to plant casualties till you could perform them asleep, and specific operating guidelines for each watchstation, and at various steps going through many hours of training watches(and you weren’t relieved from other watchstanding duties to stand these), and finally oral examinations with everyone from your chief on up to a final board with the Chief Engineer of the entire ship when qualifying our highest watchstation(Reactor operators had to qualify with the CO).
And, if that didn’t fill your day, there would be engine room drills conducted by the training team, and they would monitor how you responded to various simulated and not so simulated plant casualties. Often there would be shipwide General Quarters drills where you get to run around, close off everything on the ship, and pretend theres a bunch of missiles/torpedoes incoming, and then put out the resulting ‘fires’ in full firefighting rig.
But, eventually, you got qualified for all the watchstations, and you managed to push one of the crap extra duties off onto a newer guy and pick up a cake one, and you were senior enough to stand one watch a day, and probably get out of the workday most days as well, since there just wasn’t much work to go around. Then it got nice and relaxing out to sea. At least if you weren’t planning on staying anyway, else you’d be getting Surface Warfare qualified, Engineering watch supervisor qualified, getting primed to take an LPO spot, studying for advancement exams, and more studying to make chief.
The last year i was in I was golden, though. I wasn’t staying, so nobody expected me to start qualifying for the watch supervisor position, nor study for advancement exams, or anything… I also had the aforementioned sweet Lead Mechanic gig, which meant I didn’t work a whole lot, but it was doing something I enjoy greatly. I was, perhaps, a bit too good at it, since I somehow became the Pump Guru for the entire division(and even did a few jobs for the airdales). I also had only one watch a day.
So, pretty much, this was my day the last year in the navy…
0000-0400 - Watch in the engine room. Supervisory position. Balls to 4 watch NEVER had anything happen. Quite boring… 99% of those were entirely steady state operation with only the occasional bell change.
0400-0600 - Go for a run on the deserted hangar deck, grab some chow when the line opened at 0530.
0630 - 1400 - Sleep.
1400-2400 - whatever I felt like doing most of the time. Movies, video games(we had a wireless LAN setup with a server running an Everquest emulated server. Play cards, read a book. I also had a DVD burner, and went to see with stacks of blank discs and hunt for movies I didn’t have yet.
Soo… uh… yeah. Thats life at sea. For me anyway.