[ dramatic music playing ]
Action. They're just really chaos on the water at this point. Danger. She's
your captain and she's fearless and you gotta be fearless too. Adventure. Next
thing I know my sailor is diving into the ring and the crowd is getting louder.
Your listening to Sea Story.
Episode 17 "Submerged." My name is Skylar Herley, I'm an information
technicians N class, I'm from Winnemucca, Nevada and this is
my Sea Story. Before I joined the Navy my family was largely firefighters both
wildland and structured. When I graduated from high school I moved to
Colorado, literally the day after graduating packed my car up and moved to
a small town called Yampa and started working for the Forest Service. I always
wanted to join the military and I was going to join the military right out of
high school but I decided to wait because I wanted to try what my family
had been doing for years which was wildland firefighting. My father is a
chief of a local City Fire Department my sister is a engine boss for the Bureau
of Land Management the BLM so she manages a small crew to fight fires and
my brother-in-law is also an engine boss, it was kind of me breaking the cast
to go join the military. My parents and my sister, they were really hesitant at
first with me joining the military and I really just kind of had to make up my
mind that this what I'm gonna do and really just trying to find who I wanted
to be and not who my family wanted me to be. This job or this new life in Colorado
it was seasonal and I was having to find other work in the off seasons in the
summer time I was working for the Forest Service and in the wintertime I would go
work for a small plumbing shop.
I was looking for something more steady in my spare time, I really got
interested in building gaming PCs and things of that nature and it was from
that hobby is really what sparked my interest in becoming an I.T. I had talked
to a couple of other branches first Army, Air Force and Coast Guard and didn't
like the jobs that they wanted to give me. I came into the Navy recruiters
office and told him I was going to join the Navy he asked me "what I wanted to do"
and there was a poster of a Virginia class submarine doing an emergency
servicing maneuver and I said well "what about that?" When I heard that I could
both be in submarines, which I've always viewed as kind of elite or something,
that's special you know it's not something that everybody gets to do.
I knew if I joined the military that I wanted to be unique, I wanted to be on
that forefront. So that's how I got started in the Navy was seeing
submarines and not really know much about them at first. I just remember all
of these mixtures of emotions, excitement, and anxiety from not knowing just what
I'm getting into and ready to be gone.
After boot camp, I reported to the sub base New London in Groton, Connecticut and
started my year-and-a-half of schooling to become a I.T. for submarines.
Going through sub school, going through my A school, and earning my Comp T A+
certification, then going to earn my Comp T of security plus.
That's how I got two really good certifications that translated into the
civilian world and kind of gave me a leg up on the competition when I do become a
civilian again. What excites me the most about submarines is you know we spend
all this time underneath the water but what's the coolest is when you do get to
surface the ship. I remember the first time I went underway and the captain
said that we were going to have a steel beach. Not knowing what that meant
my mentor came up to me and said "hey did you bring a pair of shorts and t-shirts
underway?" I said " I have my PT gear" and he said "well that's good go up
topside!" I remember going up topside and just
being out in the middle of the ocean with this amazing machine and being able
to jump off the side of it and go swimming in the middle of the Atlantic
which was amazing that was probably the coolest thing I've
ever done! The craziest part of that whole experience was knowing that the
bottom of the ocean was eight thousand feet underneath me and I was swimming in that.
I think that you know younger me knowing that the older me was going to
get to go do stuff like that and be part of an organization that gets to go all
around the world and has a chance to go up to the North Pole
and has all this other stuff I think that the younger me would be chomping at
the bit to get there.
Sea Story brought to you by America's Navy. Learn more at Navy.com.
[ dramatic music playing ]