New Sea-Shore Flow

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You know the only thing that stays the same in the military is everything changes, right? Well, that and Murphy’s Law is, in fact, real. But I digress.

Earlier last month, the Navy issued a NAVADMIN (Naval Administrative Message) that changes the sea/shore flow. This NAVADMIN is effective immediately.  You can read the actual NAVADMIN 201/11 here.  For those who aren’t Navy, the sea-shore flow is the length of time spent both at sea (constant deployments) and on shore (a break from deployments).

Many of the ratings (enlisted jobs) in the Navy are affected and Huzzy’s rating is no different. The other day, I had to change our countdown of how many days he had left on sea duty from 298 to 482. We had juuust dropped into the 200s and now we are just under 500. But we are lucky. Huzzy only got another six months tacked onto his sea duty while others got a year tacked on.

I’m not sure what the reason was, but I’m sure it’s to help manning. And really, by extending sea duty 6-12 months of many ratings, it’ll actually save money on PCSing since it won’t happen as often. But man, was that a hard pill to swallow for both of us because we are just ready to get on shore (we’ve spent more time apart than normal). Poor Huzzy spent five and a half years on sea duty for his first rotation (instead of the four years he was supposed to) and then spent his shore duty recruiting. While I’ve heard it’s now much better, that particular shore duty was HELL (can I say hell on here?) when he was on it. He once went 13 weeks without a single day off. And I’m not exaggerating.

Needless to say, we are really looking forward to shore duty. A real shore duty. A real break. But now instead of getting it next spring, we won’t see it until around Thanksgiving 2012. That is, if he’s not on a deployment (patrol) at the time… then they’ll most likely extend him to finish it out.

Was your spouse affected by the change?

 

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