Chris Groves – Watch routine and structure of days for Officers

I likened it to working in an office with no windows really, and the routine that you’re running on a submarine, so you’re in 2 Watches.

1st and 2nd Watch. 1st goes from 7 in the morning ‘til 1 in the afternoon, 2nd Watch goes from 1 in the afternoon until 7 in the evening, and then 1st Watch takes over for the evening and so you’re doing 7 ‘til 1, 7 ‘til 1, or 1 ‘til 7, 1 ‘til 7, depending on which Watch you’re on, and you get yourself in to a routine. Takes a few days to get used to.

Simon: What physically or …

Yeah, you’re generally pretty tired because you’re getting yourself used to one sleep a day to maybe two sleeps a day and not very long sleeps at that.

In reality, ‘cos you’re om Watch for 6 hours and then you’re off Watch for 6 hours, but in your off Watch you’ve got to eat, wash, do all the other bits and pieces and as an Officer generally you have a bit of work to do to, that needs to be done.

So, certainly as the Navigator, I would try and get 1 Watch where I really got as much sleep as I possible could, which was probably about 4 ½ hours out of a 6 hour Watch, and then the other Watch you would just have to do some work, so whether that was Navigational Planning or your Divisional work or Administration, Correspondence stuff or whatever, and so I would tend to come off Watch, have lunch as quickly as I possibly could, work for a few hours in the afternoon and I would then usually have maybe an hours sleep before then going back on Watch.

Just a quick one before going back on Watch. So, I think the most you probably got in terms of sleep in a day was maybe 5 ½ hours, sometimes less.