THE SCENE: Haze gray with heavy fog
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
25 SSH, 5 cherry pickers, 10 tempo merkins, 10 tempo squats, 30 sec dying cockroach
THA-THANG:
Mosey from the AO to the coupon pile
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
16 HIMs
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
So I spent 4 years, 1 month, 21 days in the United States Navy. I was the 1st LT, in charge of small boat ops, helicopter takeoffs and landings, RAS, topside preservation, docking/setting sail and anchoring at sea.
An Arleigh Burke Destroyer is 509 ½ feet long and it has two anchors, a 9,000lbs (12 shots) centerline anchor and a 4,000 lbs. (8 shots) port side anchor. A shot of chain equals 15 fathoms, or 90 feet. The chain is color coded so you have an idea of how much chain has come released or brought up. One of my department’s responsibilities was to keep the chain painted black with a section of white links to mark 1 shot or 90 ft. If you do things right, you shouldn’t ever have to repaint the last two shots of chain which come from the shipyard painted yellow, then red. The saying goes, if you see yellow, start running…if you see red, you’re dead. The chain isn’t attached to the ship because it would rip a huge hole in the ship if the anchor were in a freefall. So when that red shot of chain comes up, it is like a firefighter’s hose or piece of spaghetti snaking all over the deck destroying whatever it touches.
Dropping anchor is a violent scene…you can’t see that 9,000lbs anchor because it sits over the side but as it goes barreling toward the sea floor, it starts pulling all that chain out of the locker up on to the deck, down through the hole and into the water…rust and paint chips are flying everywhere. Initially, you pay out 3 times the depth of the water in anchor chain. The ship will then start back down to set the anchor into the sea bottom and keep the chain from piling up and kinking .
What most people don’t know is that with big ships, it isn’t the anchor hooking into the ground that keeps you from drifting, it is the weight of the chain. Not only must it be strong and not break, but it has to be heavy, it has to have substance to it in order to keep the ship from drifting.
Every 15 minutes, a quartermaster will triangulate the ship’s position based on three landmarks. The shape has a radius that it can swing in based on the amount of chain paid out already. If the ship is outside of the swing circle, you know that you are drifting and in danger of running aground on the land or rocks and eventually shipwrecking.
We spent our morning getting heavy, working and building those big muscles. I hope it makes you tired throughout the day and sore tomorrow so that it reminds of the need to be heavy. You men are part of my anchor chain and I offer myself to be part of your’s. I rely on you to keep me from drifting because you are men of substance.
As far as my three landmarks, I’ve got the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to tell me if I get outside of the swing circle, to tell me if I am drifting. I may not read my Bible every 15 minutes, but I do read it every day to keep from running aground, to keep from shipwrecking.
Hebrews 6:16-19
16 For people swear an oath by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath serving as confirmation is an end of every dispute. 17]In the same way God, desiring even more to demonstrate to the heirs of the promise the fact that His purpose is unchangeable, confirmed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to hold firmly to the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and reliable and one which enters within the veil, 20 where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
