Down in steerage
February 16th, 2010 | Life at Sea Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The ad-hoc berthing spaces in Freedom's reconfigurable mission bay were packed with luggage and an NFL-grade Porta-Cool, presumably for use in the hot Caribbean, at the ship's departure Tuesday // Philip Ewing / Staff
ABOARD THE FREEDOM — Although this ship has some of the nicest accommodations in the fleet, even for its most junior crew members — although no LCS sailor is “junior” in the same way a sailor on a normal ship is — not everybody gets to enjoy them for the Freedom’s trip to San Diego. Twenty sailors and Coast Guardsmen will spend the voyage in two 12-rack “berthing modules” installed against the forward bulkhead of the inner reconfigurable mission zone, and for today’s sail-away they were living on top of a pile of their own luggage.
The bunks in the berthing module are standard-Navy coffin racks, with a little storage space under the mattress, so the sailors and Coast Guardsmen have had to set up their sea bags and suitcases in small mountains outside the modified shipping containers where they’re sleeping. Where’s all that stuff going to go? Scoop Deck asked.
“We’re trying to figure that out right now,” one sailor said.
A line was strung across the outside of the starboard berthing module and laundry was hung up to dry. The sailors staying in Recon 1 have a small living area set up against the starboard bulkhead, with work tables and connections to the ship’s computer network. There’s a head through the passageway across the compartment on the port side, and there’s also one aft of the crew’s mess that’s relatively easy to get to, sailors said.
Recon 1 does have its own “shower module,” so its occupants don’t have to traipse through the core crew members’ staterooms to bathe. The shower module has two extra-wide shower stalls and a lighted indicator that shows whether they’re in use; one sailor told Scoop Deck he actually preferred it to the ship’s showers, because the module was so much bigger.
“Only problem is that you have to get in and get out, because it stinks a little bit,” he said.
The Freedom's shower module gives sailors staying in its reconfigurable mission space their own place to bathe // Philip Ewing / Staff
Comments
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CD Says:
December 8th, 2010 at 5:34 pmI just read this and first off i know nobody down there prefferd the showers in recon 1 over the showers in the state rooms. also they backed up and really stunk and were alot smaller then the ships showers. the modules reached a high of 125 degrees and a co2 level 4 times what people should live in we would get head aches and stay up alte most nights with no sleep. And the Head never worked and if it did it was over 100 in there and you would sweat so bad you didnt want to use it. the Captain thought it better to give contracters state rooms and have empty racks for them than give them to Navy Sailors even though those Sailors did stand most watches for core crew and had them certified in everythign making their crew look better then they were and they wouldnt have been able to get these certs without them.