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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Just_Another_Day_926 on 2025-06-16 18:48:51+00:00.
So this is a very specific one. If you have been involved with shipboard operations you can skip through most of this. otherwise read below for the background.
Background: So our ship would go off the coast weekly for training and deployment workups. So we would head out Monday morning and return Friday afternoon. Sometimes stay out the weekend too
A lot of what we did were drills/practice. Shut off an engine and react. Pretend there was a fire and react. Real basic stuff. We could do this all alone. So we would be out in an area with limited shipping to be a problem. Because during these drills we would go DIW (Dead in the water) -Lose engines which also leads to no steering as well as sometimes loss of electricity. Sometimes even cover windows to simulate smoke and visibility.
Anyway you don't want to be near land or other ships while doing this as you are not a sitting target, but a moving one due to winds/tides/currents. We would be a hazard and unpredictable to other ships So I think you get the setting.
Setting: So we usually stopped the drills by 10PM (2200 hrs). From then until morning we were "steaming" in the dark with essentially no where to go. We don't drop anchor and sit. We cannot just shut things down and drift. So we literally just drive around in a racehorse pattern. We did minimum speed to keep from rocking and to steer (you need at least like 3 knots ~ 5 mph for the rudder to work). We would "patrol a large box just going back and forth. When we got near the end of the box we would do a nice and easy 180 (let our reliefs sleep and not break any plates) and head the other way. Every so often doing an adjustment because currents, winds, etc.
Our typical daily instructions (Night Orders) were ONLY to stay in the box. If we accidently leave the box we gotta notify the CO. The box was considered safe but outside of it could be an issue. Way outside could be newsworthy. There was no instruction on how to stay in the box. Very important.
A regular rule (Standing Orders) was that if we detected a ship that would have a CPA (Closest Point of Approach - closest it would come to us) was like 6NM (or 6KYds I don't remember so I will say NM) OR LESS we had to notify the Captain before it reached 10 NM with a recommendation of course/speed adjustment to keep it outside that 6. He would either approve, or disapprove and say something like "5.5 NM is okay but notify me again if it gets closer than 5 NM". This would be like if the other ship was going to pass behind us and we would needlessly speed up.
Sailors start here
MC: So at night we would try to avoid needlessly waking the captain. Like do you want to call the company owner in the middle of the night for something not necessary? So if we had this situation come up while in the box, we would do what we could to avoid it. So following both orders if a ship was coming close we would see if we could turn to avoid getting within that 10NM range. Turning and staying "in the box" followed the Night Orders and doing that to keep that ship outside the 6NM CPA before it broached 10NM allowed us to not have to call the captain per the Standing Orders.
All watchstanders (Officer of the Deck) did this as we all felt this was following the orders with the discretion we were given (just stay in the box). We were not ordered to do race course patterns or any pattern - just turn before leaving the box.
Well I guess the "old man" did not agree as one night he must have stopped in and seen this happen. Not happy with that and probably even more unhappy that this was standard. Like we were doing him a favor and not really even being MC as we interpreted the orders that way. We literally used the "discretion" we were given by being able to do whatever we wanted in the box. But CO thought we were doing MC. Since our decision to turn was based on the other ship that necessitated a call to him, even though we had discretion to do this otherwise. So the CO forced us to MC.
Captain literally changed the Orders. Now if we made any course/speed changes due to shipping and not solely due to being at the edge of the box, we had to call in. I think he though we weren't seeing a lot of shipping. Because he was now getting woken up multiple times at night. That's after long days of drills. So instead of being the person with the most sleep (he did not stand night watch) he now got the least.
I can't remember if that got changed back by the end of the next week or the week after. But even he (huge micromanager) realized how dumb it was to get a call at 2 AM (0200) saying "Captain. We are five minutes from turning due to the end of the box. We have a ship that is predicted to have a CPA of 6.0NM on our bow (in front of us) right now and it is at 12NM. Per your orders we are recommending maintaining current plan to turn in now 4 minutes. When we make the turn we estimate a new CPA of 9NM on our stern (behind us)." Note that they could have turned 5 minutes early per the old rules and not had to call. And this same scenario could be in the middle of the box and turning early.