Sea Story Thursday, where I tell you a Navy related Story, just because.

How Sea Story Thursday was born:

My Uncle & Dad. That’s the plain and simple reason. While on leave they both kept bringing up stories I had told them over the past few years at sea. My Uncle told me that he loved to tell my stories to anyone who would listen. hmmmm… I’ve got plenty more where that came from, maybe I’ll make it a weekly rendition. Done!

The first story I’m going to tell you about is how I came to own a Korean Fishing Buoy.

As it so happened at the time we were operating off the coast of Korea for Operation Ssang Yong. The area was chalk full of fishing buoys as are most places in Asia.

We were on the bridge shalaleming between buoys and its always pretty fun because its like driving the ship down a race track with cones and you just get to throw over the rudder and if you judge it just right you can take all 16,000 tons and effortlessly weave through groups of them.

A couple of hours later we started doing some amphib operations. Its very hard to maneuver the ship during these operations so at this point we just let the mission take over and that’s that, no more weaving in and out of the buoys.

Then all of the sudden the captain and I both got a call over our radios from the well deck, that there was an obstruction in the stern-gate. Just think of a big door at the back of the ship all the way open and trailing in the water. I had a feeling I knew what was sticking up out of the stern gate, a Korean fishing buoy.

The captain started laughing and told them to send it to the bridge. A marine brought it up to us and now I’m the proud owner of a 9ft. Korean fishing buoy. As a small disclaimer I am sorry to the fisherman who’s buoy I snagged, your lively hood is important, but just know this buoy is going to travel the world with me wherever I go and its currently on its way to Naples Italy.

To make the buoy more manageable I went down to the HT shop (hull technicians) and borrowed a hack saw. Then I went up and shaved it down and threw the bamboo pieces overboard. It will have a nice spot in my Italian home. 🙂

This article appeared first on Dynamic Soarer