There are meanings fro this phrase that run from funny to just plain old nasty. But the Navy uses this for a specific evolution that takes place when ever a Battle fleet to heads off to deployment.

The entire battle group comes close together and aircraft will circle the fleet and take pictures. Every ship has its place, even the submarines. While this is taking place nobody is allowed on the weather decks of the ship.

Of course since this id run by the Navy they tend to take forever getting pictures taken of the ships in formation. Sailing in formation can be a challenge for surface ships. Then put into the mix the submarines, then you really have a mess waiting to happen.

The command will usually give each sailor on board a picture so they can put them on their “I love me” wall at home. I had to take the fuel and water report to the bridge while ours was going on. I had never seen so many officers on our bridge at any one time. If you notice the wakes of the smaller ships, they have their prairie air systems running.

One thing that is unique about when we did this, on the POD for that day, it did say Goat Rope. If I recall it was about 90 minutes long as well. The smokers were chomping at the bit to go outside and have a fix after that one.