Sunday, September 11, 2011

Navy Surface Wives, enlighten me.

Alright, I have a question for all the Surface Navy wives/SO's out there.

Hubs has been lightly toying with the idea of a career change within the Navy. One, which could very potentially end him up on a surface ship. My biggest concern with this change is that if he does it, it obviously means that he would extend his contract, but also that he might end up on a ship with longer underways than he has now. And being so relatively close to the end of this enlistment, I would hate for him to make a switch that is supposed to be for the better but only renders him gone for longer periods of time. Though, perhaps it's worth it if he's also home for longer periods of time?

Currently his schedule is pretty consistent. More or less, in for three months, out for three months...ish. Basically, he's gone for half the year in evenly spaced chunks.

So, my question is: What is the surface schedule like. How long can I expect him to be out for and how long might he be home for?  I realize this might be different from place to place so i guess I'm looking for everyone's experience so I might get an accurate survey of what I could expect. 

Also, any other perks to being on a surface ship vs a boomer submarine? Like, do they get internet (webcam), carepackages, mail, portcalls, etc?

3 comments:

  1. This is my experience. Mr gets internet connection on his ship, but just emails. They aren't allowed on Facebook or anything like that. They also cannot Skype. It is the network on his ship, not all ships are like that. Underways can be anywhere from a week to a few months. Mr was home for a couple weeks, gone a week, home a week, gone for a couple weeks...it varied. Our deployment was suppose to be 7 months, but then they were surged early and now we have an 11 month deployment. I don't know if you can use my husbands ship as an example though, from my understanding this can be rare. But yea, this is my experience. Communication has been very good though. We email everyday and I usually get a phone call everyday. During port visits as long as he can get a good internet connection, we do get to Skype. So it isn't all that bad! I wish you guys the best of luck no matter what you choose.

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  2. I was waiting to see if anyone had written before me! My hubby's been on only subs, but from what I've heard from surface wives, their schedules are just as unreliable and unpredictable as fast attacks. If you're looking for some stability (and I use that term VERY loosely when talking about the Navy, ha!) with regards to schedules, then I think boomers are it! (Generally speaking... I'm sure there are surface ships that have more predictable schedules, but I have yet to meet someone on one)

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