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The standard number of starting skill areas is 7. It might help your character later to have as many as possible, within reason. Skill area descriptions are a way of showing what your character knows how to do, where he learned it, and how good he is as particular stuff.
If you could please flesh out the history a bit more, things related to his life and what he did before he joined the Navy; life as a child, his family, that sort of stuff. Having that in helps to create RP for the character