Everyone knows that FBM submariners are not good line handlers. We only got to practice a couple of times a year. I was in charge of line 6 which is the aft most line on the KEY. I liked it because no one ever went back there due to the fact that you had to slide down the turtleback to get there and it was often slippery. On this day we are returning to port and the tug pulls along side. The guy at the bow of the tug, which was about 5 feet above us at line 6, tossed down a line to us to put over the cleat. The noose at the end of the line was too small to go over the cleat. I was standing there with Jim Belew, a fellow missile tech. He had the line in his hands and neither of us knew what to do with it now. The guy on the tug yells down," Dip the eye!". Jim asked me," What the hell does that mean?" I had no idea and there was no one near to ask. The guy yells again, this time louder "DIP THE F***ING EYE!". We did not want to let this civilian think we did not know our ass from our elbows when it came to line handling so Jim tossed the line into the water - dipping it.

The guy on the tug about busted a gut laughing. He called a few other guys on the tug to the bow and told them what we did and they started laughing. The COB noticed the commotion and came down to line 6. He ask us what was happening. We said, " We're dipping the eye". He kicked Jim in the ass. I had headphones on or he would have kicked me too. He explained, in a rather disgusted voice, that dipping the eye means that you reach through the noose, grab the line and pull it through the eye. This makes a noose that will fit over the cleat and pulls tight. It took months to live down. I'm sure the guy on the tug tells the story more often than we do.