How to simulate a six month cruise at home - from back in the day when I was in the US Navy

How to simulate a six month cruise at home

By ET2 Duane Smith

1. When commencing this simulation, remember to lock all friends and family outside. Your only means of communication should be letters that your neighbors have held for at least three weeks and thrown away one of every five.

2. Surround yourself with 400 people you do not like. People who chain smoke, fluctuate loudly and fragrantly, often snore like a Mack truck going uphill and use foul language like a kid uses sugar on cereal.

3. Unplug all radios and TV’s from receiving signals other then from your VCR to cut yourself off completely from the outside world, but have a neighbor bring you a time or Newsweek from 2 month’s ago and a Playboy with all the pictures torn out.

4. Every morning write yourself a POD (plan of the day) for the next day. Outline all events that will happen and all the things you have to do (account for all 24 hours). Then ignore it.

5. Wake up at 6am every morning and eat breakfast at 7:45 read the plan of the day to yourself.

6. Call the electric and water companies and have them randomly cut your water and electricity off for approximately 4-5 hours a day three times a week.

7. Have all your friends call you at all hours of the day and night asking stupid questions that have absolutely no relevancy to anything.

8. Drink only bug juice, to simulate bug juice, buy four one-quart packages of cool-aid, make them with one quart of water and 8 cups of sugar.

9. Ask all your neighbors to send over all five to seven year old children to boss you around all day, this will simulate the officers. (Same mentality)

10. Monitor all appliances hourly, recording all the vital information, (i.e., is it plugged in, does the light come on when the door is opened etc, etc) if any appliance is not operating correctly, cover the unit tags that say, “DANGER DO NOT OPERATE”.

11. Do not flush the toilet for 5 days to simulate 40 nasty people using the same toilet, afterwards flush only once a day.

12. Lock the bathroom door twice a day for a 4-hour cleaning period.

13. Have week old fruits and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait 2 weeks before eating.

14. Prepare all meals blindfolded, using all the spices you can grab or none at all. This will simulate shipboard food; eat it all as fast as humanly possible.

15. Install a device that shuts off the AC in the middle of the night, as soon as you start sweating and uncover have it come back on.

16. Wash all dishes with no soap and on the economy cycle, leaving large chunks of the last meal to be savored later.

17. Have your neighbors send you tapes of your favorite shows, insure they only tape half of the show and never the part one of a “to be continued”.

18. Place a magnet, hanging from the ceiling, beside your television to remove all the color from the picture and to make to images move around while you are watching.

19. To simulate a refueling at sea go to the local gas station and volunteer to pump gas for 3-5 hours daily, always stretching the hose as far as it will reach, spilling gas all over yourself.

20. Wear only military uniforms, even though no one cares. Clean and press a dress uniform and wear it for twenty minutes, after which you can change back into the uniform of the day.

21. Cut your hair weekly making it shorter every week until you are bald or look like you tangled with a weed eater on crack.

22. Work in 18-hour cycles, sleeping for only 4 hours at a time to ensure your body no longer cares if it is night or day.

23. Call the grocery store and have them deliver forty pallets of flour, sugar and rice. Unload all of this manually and store it in an extremely small place such as a bathroom or closet.

24. Repaint your house inside an out at least once a month, whether it needs it or not. Use old paint that was discarded by the supplier.

25. Ensure the hot water heater is connected to a device that provides water at a rate varying between 0-25 PSI and the temperature should vary between 32 and 320 degrees.

26. When eating with a spoon, make sure it is the kind that will hold as least a ½ a cup.

27. Remember, the lowest bidder built everything you own and work on.

28. Cut a very thin mattress in half, making it only 22 inches wide, enclose three side with sheet metal and add a roof that prevents you from sitting in any position (ten inches is good). Place this whole contraption about 4 feet off the floor, place a dead animal under the bed to simulate your bunkmates body odor and funky feet smell. Attach a set of keys to a string hooked to the ceiling fan to slap against the side all night long.

29. Make up a qualification for all things in your house, including how to flush the toilet. Now compile a list of people who can qualify you in each area, ensure that those people are dead or hate you.

30. Invite 40 people over to watch your favorite 2 month old ½ a show and let them sit on the furniture while you take up a seat on the floor only to have them change the channel immediately.

31. Ensure the movies your friends send you are all old John Wayne movies with tracking problems, watch these twice a night.

32. Have the grocery store deliver 2 pallets of single serving boxes of stale bran flakes, to be eaten only with semi fresh powdered milk or cottage cheese.

33. Every evening at 20 hundred, no matter what you are doing, stop and place an Oral Roberts tape in the VCR and watch for about 5 minutes. After this is over resume normal activities.

34. Set your alarm clock to go off at 5-minute intervals for the first hour of sleep to simulate various times the watch standers and night crews bump around and wake you up. Be sure to set you bed up on a rocking table to ensure you are tossed around the remaining three hours. Alternately use a custom clock that simulates fire alarms, whistle blasts and flushing toilets.

35. Periodically shut off the power at the main fuse box and run around shouting, “fire in the main space”, do this until you lose your voice and then restore power.

36. At least once a week force the toilet to overflow on the bathroom floor. This will simulate a shipboard toilet backup. (The equivalent of back flushing the entire city sewage system into your home.

37. Remove all plants, pictures and decorations. Paint all furnishing and walls gray, white or the shade of pea green used on hospital smocks.

38. Study the owner’s manuals for all house hold appliances, at regular intervals take each one apart and put it back together again for no reason at all.

39. Buy a gas mask, smear it with rancid animal fat and scrub the faceplate with steel wool until you can no longer see. Wear this two hours every 5th day, even to the bathroom.

40. Purchase 50 cases of rolled cardboard (fake toilet paper) lock up all but two rolls, making sure one is always wet

41. Every two days, smash yourself in the forehead and the shins with a hammer to simulate collision injuries sustained on Naval vessels

42. When making sandwiches, leave the bread out about 5 days or until it is hard and stale, whichever comes first.

43. Every 10 weeks simulate liberty in a foreign country. Go outside, go directly to the city slums wearing your best clothes. Then go into the worse looking place you can find and ask the bartender for the most expensive imported beer he has. Drink as many of these as you can in four hours. Hire a cab to take you home using the longest possible route he can find. Tip the driver after he charges you double rate because you dress funny and don’t speak right.

44. Use semi fresh milk for only the first week, after a simulated liberty port

45. Keep the bedroom thermostat set at 39 degrees F and use only one wool blanket and no sheets

46. Take all of your belongings and stuff them into two little lockers (similar to, but smaller than, bus station lockers.

47. Place a device on your shower head that puts so much chlorine into the water that your eyes sting for hours after your 2 minute Navy shower

48. Buy a computer at an outrageous price, but do not use it. This is for the officers (the 5-7 year old kids)

49. Hook up an air compressor to ten whistles throughout your house and blow them for 25 seconds every 10 minutes – 24 hours a day

50. Have a neighbor shoot at your house with a high powered rifle at least twice a week, this will simulate an attack and general quarters, at which time you will practice closing all the curtains, doors and securing the power 

51. If you happen to get sick call your mother in law, the one who hates you. She knows all about medicine (including setting broken bones and fixing teeth) and have her come take care of you.

52. At least four times a week you will get no sleep because you will be on watch. This involves sitting around doing nothing except you can’t sleep, read or eat for eight hours at a time. This will be done with extremely uncomfortable headphones which weigh 13.34 pounds.

53. Tear all the carpet out of your house. Now tack down 50 grit sandpaper everywhere, this will simulate our non-skid decks.

54. If you are a smoker and want a cigarette, first buy a walk in refrigerator and install it in a friends house, at least three miles away from your house. Next walk over to that house and walk into the fridge and smoke one cigarette, repeat at needed.

55. After thoroughly cleaning your house for 3.5 hours a day, invite the officers to come over and tell you how filthy it is, do this every day except Sunday.

56. If a prepared meal by chance does turn out to be tasteful, never allow yourself more than one small portion, three ounces and toss the remaining portions in the trash.

57. Once a month, issue medals to the officers for all that you have accomplished.

58. To simulate chief petty officers, have the neighbors send the oldest, fattest living relatives to come over and talk about the way things were done at their last house.

60. Drink at least 5 gallons of coffee a day to ensure a maximum state of alertness while on watch. The temperature of the coffee should be no less than 1987.45 degrees and no warmer than the temperature on the surface of the sun. this coffee must be allowed to ferment for no less than eight hours, proper planning is in order.

61. Store all trash in the dining room for a minimum of three weeks before throwing it into your back yard, ensure you separate food contaminated plastics from regular trash

62. Wash your clothes in the cheapest detergent you can find (usually comes in 800 gallon barrels for two bucks) this will simulate shipboard laundry by making all your whites pale and yellow and shrinking everything else by three sizes

If by chance you want to quit – TOUGH, you have 5 months and 29 days left!

This is written to help you, the family member or friend, understand the joys of an extended period at sea and give you a chance to give it a try.

Good luck and happy sailing.