Out over Blue Water

Sean F. Tierney

Description

From the helo dunker to sock puppets, Out Over Blue Water is a humorous, reflective, and optimistic collection of stories from the author's adventures as a US Navy helicopter pilot and software sales engineer.
When he began managing sales engineering teams that were home-based and geographically spread out, Sean started sharing stories of his past adventures with them as a way to connect. Most of the stories come from his ten years in the Navy, but some are from his early days as a solution engineer in the software industry. After one too many suggestions that he should make a book out of these emails, he decided to give it a try. Out Over Blue Water is a loose collection of misadventures, hijinks, and characters presented in no chronological order and punctuated with a few insights and lessons learned.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Armada de los Estados Unidos
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Navy

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 15 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781665567947
• Langue: English

Extrait

Out Over Blue Water
Sean F. Tierney


AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2022 Sean F. Tierney. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  08/15/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6795-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6793-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6794-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914983
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Trafalgar
Maggot
Screamin’ Pete
Inspection
Jo Jungle
The National Archives
Sock Puppets
The Greenie Board
Perspective
Sailing
Ownership
Skipper Of The Narwhal
Strap In Or Strap On
The Helo Dunker
The Backstroke And Flipper
Farewell To A Friend
Out Over Blue Water
The Gitmo Five
Skyhawk
The Legend Of Scott Hadaway
Candor
Pink Floyd And The Msdd
Command By Negation
Admiral Burke
Epic
More Good Stories
Sometimes
About The Author

“Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.”
- Arleigh Burke
INTRODUCTION

The first ten years of my career were as a helicopter pilot in the US Navy. After that, I have spent over twenty years in the world of software sales engineering. When I started leading geographically distributed teams, I discovered how challenging it can be to connect with people who you only communicate with by email, phone, or webcast. Most of those calls are pre-scheduled, time-limited, and have a specific business purpose. You miss out on the spontaneous, unstructured hallway conversations and discussions over lunch that give us opportunities to learn more about each other, which is invaluable to effective communication and understanding. So, to try to close that gap, I started emailing stories about my past adventures to my teams. Some were short, some were longer. They weren’t scheduled and were often sent in response to what was going on in the team, the business, or the world at the time. This book is a collection of those stories.
I should probably also preface this by saying that none of it is true. In fact, most of it is true and all of it is based on my memory of the truth, but my recollection of things over twenty years ago could be cloudy. The more familiar you are with the US Navy and with Naval Aviation, especially in the 1990s, the more mistakes and errors you will find. So, if you’d like, we can call this a work of fiction and leave it at that. Regardless, I like my version of the truth and it makes me smile.
Before we get started, I’d like to thank my team at Blackboard, who saved up six years of stories that I had shared with them and used them to produce a unique book that they gave to me when I left. Their gift gave me the determination to make this more comprehensive collection a reality. Whatever happens with this book, I will always keep it on a lower shelf than its predecessor.
I also want to give many thanks to my wife, the Librarian. She has read and re-read these stories too many times to count, and indulged me in reliving these adventures. She has been extremely patient and supportive throughout this project, not to mention the role she played in many of these escapades.
TRAFALGAR

This story is typically one of the first emails that I send to a new team .
In October of 1805, off the coast of Cape Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Nelson – in command of the British Royal Naval Fleet – met in combat the combined forces of the French and Spanish navies. Admiral Nelson commanded twenty-seven ships of the line against thirty-three similarly equipped ships. At the end of the battle, the Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships and the British lost none. Of the eleven Franco-Spanish ships that escaped to Cadiz, only five were considered seaworthy.
Naval historians have analyzed this battle many times, which is believed to have confirmed British naval supremacy across the globe. At the end of reviewing tactics and strategy, most conclude that what solidly gave Nelson the advantage is that he had invested the time in ensuring that the captains of his fleet knew more than the planned maneuvers and signals – he made sure they understood how he thought. In that way, when the smoke and fog of the war descended on them and his ships could no longer see his signal flags or receive directions, Nelson’s captains were able to make intuitive decisions and take action in unison with the other ships, even without being able to communicate.
If you had the opportunity to talk to my former team members, they would warn you that I occasionally send out lengthy, introspective stories like this. I try to make them somewhat interesting, but my intent is to try to give you as much exposure as possible to how I think, which should be much more valuable than what I think. I hope to learn the same of you as well. Email isn’t always the best method of communicating these sorts of thoughts - but it has the advantage of giving me the chance to collect my thoughts and refine them, as well as giving you the luxury of reading them at your leisure over a drink, which is probably for the best.
My last tour in the Navy was as the flag aide at Naval District Washington. This was my first exposure to the executive-level pace of life and I was surprised at how little control the senior officers had over their day-to-day schedules. Every morning when the admiral arrived in the office, he was presented with an index card with his agenda for the day (packed solidly from 0800 until 1800 - and many times even beyond). And his staff’s job was to ensure that he left each meeting on time to make it to the next meeting on time. After several months of this, I remember one admiral directing that we hard schedule thirty minutes every day with no commitments. This small block of time he reserved for “staring out the window” – time that he reserved for open, undirected thinking and not reacting. He was one of the most effective leaders that I have ever worked for.
We work in a very reactive environment with constant demands for our attention. This is not an environment conducive to making good, well-thought-out decisions. I need you to make sure that you find the time to stare out the window and think.
MAGGOT

I joined the Navy through the college ROTC program in the late 80s. In addition to the regular academic supplements and summer training, midshipmen also had the opportunity to participate in special programs during breaks as they were available. One year there was an opportunity for a weeklong orientation program with the Marines, and being the naive, optimistic young kid that I was at the time, I thought, “That sounds like fun.” (I can hear you Marines chuckling already. Shut up.) “Orientation” turned out to be a euphemism for something completely different.
We were transported from the airport to the base by school bus and it was during this ride that we met our tour guide for the week. He introduced himself as “Gunnery Sergeant,” making it quite clear that other methods of address were unacceptable. For expediency, he took the liberty of introducing all forty of us to each other as well. I think my name must have been misspelled on the roster, but since all thirty-nine other midshipmen were apparently also named “Maggot,” I thought it was probably easier not to question it at that time. As it was, Maggot (three seats forward and two to the left) had a question of his own and raised the inquiry to our guide. I guess he was too distracted by the quick introduction to his other thirty-nine tour-mates because Maggot didn’t remember to use Gunnery Sergeant’s full name in addressing him and that displeased our guide very much. Poor Maggot found himself face down in the center aisle of the moving school bus doing push-ups at forty mph. Maggot (three seats straight back) thought this was funny, and earned himself ten miles of push-ups as well.
After the bus experience, we were beginning to suspect that this week wasn’t going to be exactly the tour we expected. We were given a schedule for the next morning that included breakfast at 0700. At 0445 the next day, we were aggressively woken from our beds and informed that we had fifteen minutes to get showered, shaved, and dressed if we wanted to get breakfast on time. Maggot (across the aisle, four bunks left, top rack) said he thought that breakfast wasn’t for at least another two hours. Now you would think that someone who got up this early so often would be more of a morning person, but that was not the case with Gunnery Sergeant, and the question was not received pleasantly. After Maggot did his fifty push-ups, Gunnery Sergeant informed us all that breakfast was in fact at 0700, but was a five-mile hike away from the barracks, and so we had better move ! The next fourteen minutes and fifty seconds are a bit