I have a request from all of you in the fleet. I am attempting to get a wet trainer here in Cape May for the recruits to utilize as part of a culminating event. As of right now there is no practical damage control training in the recruit schedule. The intent of this trainer is just to get the recruits hands wet, we will not have a class or teach them the numbers associated with each patch or plug. What I need from the field to help push this through is your comments on if you think it would help you in the fleet if your newly arriving personel had seen some sort of wet trainer before they got to you.
Please post any opinions, positive or negative....thank you
Something as simple as a pipe patch would be beneficial and cheap. Soft patch, synthoglass, jubilee just so they see it before they reach the cutter. You could probably get the cutters there to give you their expired synthoglass. Donnie you still going to be their next summer?
We have tons of synthoglass, I got from the Navy...I dont know if we are going to actually utilize it as it is a pain in the butt removing once it dries, and the command here may not want the recruits touching them, and getting the resin.
I'm not sure yet. Hopefully I'll hear something in the next few weeks. I used to remove the synthoglass as soon as training was over and it was real easy. The resin could be a problem I guess. Anyway, I applaud your efforts for trying to give the recruits that much more training before they head to a boat and give that deer in a headlight look.
Donny....buy some wood closet rods or landscape logs and have them practice their soft patches and jubilees on them. then i would just go over the sythoglass process or if your command allows them to get their hands dirty, buy some PVC piping...when their done, you can cut off the PVC/sythoglass section and throw it away. its cheap and easy to set up. I ran this training for SeaOps on the river tender and it worked great.
I've been on Big boats, small boats, and land units, and it sounds like a damned good idea to me. Especially when they go to a smaller crewed unit. I think they need to go through an actual fire trainer too.
When I do SEOPS and DCPQS training with the new guys describeing just how a fire is going to feel and react to a fog stream, or putting a patch or plug into something when your chest deep in COLD water just doesn't work. You have to feel it. However I think it would have to include some classroom time, but not a lot of time, "going over the numbers" so to speak in order for it to be effective at all. Just my 2 cents for what it's worth. --DC1 Warner
