I wrote this book for you future recruit, so that your life at Cape May may be easier than mine. Coast Guard Boot Camp is no joke. There is A LOT of information thrown at you right from the very beginning and while you will make mistakes, the Company Commanders will expect you to adapt quickly. For every mistake you make, you will write up a performance tracker. The more performance trackers you get, the more you will stand out negatively and the more you will get picked on – which means you’ll have to adapt even faster. Once you get categorized as a bad recruit, it’s extremely difficult to break out of the cycle of punishment. Let me explain for you how this works.

In the first 1.5 – 2 weeks of your 8 week stay at Cape may, your Company Commanders are figuring out where to categorize recruits. If they decide that you’re someone who needs “special attention” you are going to get called on frequently for required knowledge. You will also be scrutinized more for attention to detail items (i.e. – your uniform, your shave for men, your hair for women, etc). Since you are getting called on much more frequently, your chances of screwing something up go up significantly. If you get picked on once a day you just have to make sure you get it right ONCE. If you get picked on 10 times a day, that’s 10 times you’re “on stage” and you have to perform.

Here’s what you may not know about being “on stage”. I’m sure you are already familiar with the fact that if you answer something incorrectly you’ll get hit with a performance tracker. Except it’s not as simple as just messing up on the answer to their question. If you also don’t respond in the correct way (in the Survival Guide I teach how to respond correctly to 8 of the most common daily scenarios), you get hit with another performance tracker. If you don’t then respond correctly to the mistake you made and repeat your response correctly, that’s another performance tracker. If you accidentally address a Company Commander the wrong way (i.e. – call them “sir” when they are not an Officer), that’s another one. You can actually rack up quite a few in one interaction. One of my shipmates once got hit with 14 performance trackers in only one interaction!

Here’s how that leads into a vicious cycle. So you get hit with the performance trackers which means you’ll be doing Incentive Training in the evening. The Incentive Training is not only wearing you down physically but when you’re doing that, the squared away recruits are ironing their uniforms, organizing their rack, studying, etc.

Now you have to do all that stuff after lights out. This means you’re getting even less of the little sleep you can get. If it’s on a night where you have to stand watch as well, you realistically will probably only get 1-2 hours of sleep and then it’s “FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!!” at 5:30am again. Now you’re exhausted because you were up all night catching up on the things everyone else was doing while you were doing Incentive Training.

When you combine little sleep with lots of physical activity it makes your memory and brain function decrease and will also likely make you catch the “Cape May Crud” (i.e. – you will get sick). This means that you’ll have a harder time learning new information and your physical performance will go down as well. When that happens, you are that much more likely to screw up again and it just leaves you stuck in a vicious cycle of punishment. The deeper you bury yourself in this quicksand of failure the harder it is to get out.

If you rack up enough performance trackers, you get sent to RAMP. You DO NOT want to go to RAMP. I remember one night when the recruits who were in RAMP passed through our squad bay with giant heavy ropes, soaked in water that they were hoisting over their head from one shoulder on to the other while yelling the Coast Guard Core Values in between. We were told that they’d be doing that for several hours. If you can’t get it together in RAMP, you will then get reverted and eventually discharged. I urge you to not go down this route.

The information I give you in the Coast Guard Boot Camp Survival Guide is all the missing pieces that you don’t get by reading the Helmsman or combing through the forums. It’s the stuff that either I myself screwed up on or I saw others screw up on. Honestly Chapter Six alone is worth getting the book. One of the most common mistakes that recruits make is in the way they speak / respond. In Chapter Six I outline exactly how to respond correctly for 8 of the most common daily situations you will be faced with. The Coast Guard Boot Camp Survival Guide is your insurance policy for making it in Basic Training.

Look, I know you’re probably thinking you’ll just learn this stuff when you get there – that’s what most people think, including the ones who get sent to RAMP, get reverted, or get discharged. Here’s the thing, you might have some natural strengths – maybe you have really good muscle endurance and can do lots of push ups, or you’re a genius who can memorize lots of information very quickly – but regardless of these natural abilities, preparing as much as you can now, will give you an enormous advantage. When I went I was in above average physical shape but that didn’t make Incentive Training fun. It was still miserable. I would have rather not screwed up those times I did and avoided it all together.

Instead of learning through trial-and-error when you get there, just learn this stuff now so you won’t get beat at Cape May, or worse – you end up discharged for failing to adapt. Even if you can take the beatings and make it through, do you really want to do that for 8 weeks? Consider that the average recruit only gets about 3-5 hours of sleep a day and you’re awake doing something for 19-21 hours a day, for 8 weeks straight. Believe me when I tell you that the weeks seem a lot longer when you’re awake for that long every day and you don’t get much time to sleep in between. If you read and study the Coast Guard Boot Camp Survival Guide you will make a lot less mistakes, minimize the physical and mental punishments and you’ll get a lot more sleep. In boot camp, even an extra hour of sleep is precious – you’ll see what I mean when you get there. For that reason alone – never mind the getting reverted or discharged – it’s worth it. PLUS YOU GET A FULL 60 DAYS TO TRY IT!