I averaged 3 hours of sleep a night on my DDG and CG. Sometimes I'd go days, 48-36 hours, depending on scheduling, before I could catch more than a 90 minute nap over lunch in my shop.
Quarters is at 07. Work goes until 1700, give or take until 2000 if there's a big project going on.
Watch was port and starboard, so, 0600-1200, and then six hours off, and then 1800-2400. After three months we got someone qualified and we jumped to three section, which was worse: five hours of watch followed by ten hours off, followed by five hours of watch. Keep in mind that work, PT, your current qualifications, and meals must all fit into this schedule.
Then, I was on flight quarters. We pretty much ran helo ops from 2000-04, maybe 0500 every night.
Break this down for you, this is what my day looked like.
0600-1200, watch.
12-1230, lunch
1230-1600 work.
1600-1800, dinner/quals/gym.
1800-0000, watch. If we were at flight quarters, I'd get relieved by another watchstander and I'd go man up the flight deck.
Flight quarters would go until 0400. I'd be lucky to catch two hours of sleep before assuming the watch again at 0600. I often showered and would nap in my shop.
If we were in five-and-dimes, my day would look like this:
0600--Breakfast. Which I wouldn't get up for, because that's an extra hour of sleep.
0700--quarters, work until 0800 when I would assume the watch.
0800-1200, watch.
1200-1230, lunch.
1230-1600, work.
1600-1800, dinner/gym/quals/personal time to decompress. IF we we had a huge project, I'd be back at work from 1800-2000.
Flight quarters would man up....give or take their schedule was usually at 2000, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.
Watch again at 2200-0300. Again, if at flight quarters, someone else had to fill that in. If not, I'd get to go back to sleep until the next day.
Same schedule, but this time my next watch would be 12-17 and 02-08.
(watch blocks on five and dime look like 07-12, 12-17, 17-22, 22-02, 02-07.....watch for five, off for ten hours. Repeat. It's awful. Even if you don't have flight quarters and you get broken sleep with that rotating schedule, what ends up happening is you have a sleep deficiency of hours, it eventually adds up to you being so tired that you're hallucinating. NPC did a sleep study and found that after a week on a rotating watch schedule you basically are operating as if you'd been two beers (or more) deep. Here's the solution the Navy developed, but nobody wants to implement, in order to fix this problem:
https://my.nps.edu/web/crewendurance/index
So. I don't know what the other guy is saying about "being run ragged" is an exaggeration, but I have personally gone without sleep for so long that I have seen and heard things that weren't there. I've witnessed accidents that could have been avoided because the person was so tired they had no right to be operating heavy machinery, including an incident in which someone got descalped and someone else almost losing a finger. I've been off sea duty for about six months and my sleep schedule is so ****** I can't go more than about four hours without jolting awake and having to basically go through a relaxation process to get myself to go fall back asleep. Past experience has shown it'll take me another 6 months to a year to get out of the just enough sleep to function" phase and then I'll be up for sea duty again, anyway.
I'm not bitching about my underway work schedule, I'm stating it as a fact: It's ******, and I'm not happy about it.
Edit: and don't even get me started on drills.
Edit2: I woke up this morning to my kid brother younger brother (who is an Army combat vet; he'll always be my "kid brother" though) texting to tell me I hit bestof, and this has garnered a lot more attention than I was ever expecting. I am reading every response even if I don't reply--I'm stationed in Japan so it's the middle of my work day now and I can't skate off on my phone for long stretches to reply to everyone. Also, to everyone who had worse sleep schedules, I don't envy you, to everyone who had it better, I know, I should've gone aviation like my husband. He gets that blessed "crew rest" on deployment.
And thank you for the gold
Edit 3: Twice gilded, wow. If ya'll really want to put your money to good use (not that supporting Reddit server time isn't great), please consider donating to the
Navy Marine Corps Relief Society. They really took care of the sailors onboard the USS Fitzgerald and I know they're going to do the same for the Big Bad John. They've also personally helped me and my sailors deal with family emergencies and other life-problems like wrecked cars, flooded houses, tree-damaged roofing and general budgeting and short-term loans. Also NMCRS is tax-deductible.