Reporter's Notebook

Wanted: Sleeping suggestions

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The worst night of sleep — or lack thereof — I’ve ever endured took place this summer aboard the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, when I flew aboard with a small group of reporters to observe its pre-deployment workups. After an action-packed day that included a terrifying arrested landing (my first); climbing up and down every single ladder in the carrier (it seemed); and a general quarters drill in the hangar bay (luckily all I had to do was watch); the rack in my “Distinguished Visitor” cabin felt like a cloud.

Then the air wing came back aboard.

Aviators don’t keep banker’s hours aboard a carrier, and as I began drifting off to sleep around midnight, the first F/A-18s of VFA-213, the Blacklions, slammed onto the flight deck. Each Super Hornet trap shook my rack as though someone were bashing it with a sledgehammer. And every half hour or so — but not at predictable intervals — a huge machine would switch on in some nearby compartment, creating a racket like a lawnmower engine being fed into a document shredder. Other, subtler noises, like the chatter of sailors coming back from the smoking deck, drifted down the passageway. I tried to close my eyes and block it all out, but I had to start over with each jarring new sound in the giant ship. By our wake-up call the next morning, I hadn’t slept more than five consecutive minutes.

Fortunately, there won’t be any fighter jets landing on board the Freedom, but it still prompts me to ask all you current and former sailors out there: How do you learn to sleep in a floating steel tub? Earplugs? MP3 player? Mental resolve? I’m open to all suggestions — please leave them in the comments.