About Ohio-class Submarines

Im sure there will be many more questions about how my schedule as far as my boat's deployment goes, so i figure i should tackle that right now. Lets start with a few definitions.

Underway: When the ship is out-to sea, to sum up "deployed"

Blue Crew: One of a SSBN's two, rotating crews. I am ordered to the blue crew.

Gold Crew: The other crew.

Turn-over: When the off-going crew updates and gives the boat to the on-coming crew.

Re-Fit: Some general maintenance performed by the on-coming crew before taking her out to sea.

Dry-dock: Exactly as it sounds. The boat is pulled out of the water for serious maintenance.

Off-crew: The crew that is on shore while the other crew is underway.

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January 1st 2010: Gold Crew takes the USS Alaska underway for a planned 70 days.

March 10th 2010: Gold Crew returns to King's Bay, GA. Upon docking, they begin to turn-over the boat to the Blue Crew, informing them of any changes in the ships systems, or behavior as well as assessing what maintenance is required before the boat goes underway again.

March 13th 2010: Gold Crew has the next 90 days on shore, where they will participate in trainers, exercises and exams that can be performed in on-shore simulators. Gold Crew is now defined as the "Off-crew". Now its time for maintenance and on-ship tests so Blue Crew can get the boat underway again. This process is called re-fit and will take roughly two weeks.

March 31st 2010: Blue Crew takes USS Alaska underway for a scheduled 60 day patrol.

June 1st 2010: USS Alaska returns to port and goes into Dry-dock to repair deranged torpedo tube and periscope. The maintenance is estimated to span 6-months.

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Thats just an example of how it works as far as what i understand. Hopefully for the boat's sake, it stays out of dry-dock. Sometimes boats go into dry dock for maintenance for extreme amounts of time. For instance, the USS San Francisco after hitting a mountain spent roughly 3 years in drydock.

Lets hope that never happens again. Anyways - the process would loop this example for the most part. So there ya go.

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