Stories from Afloat

"Warm Weather Penguins"

in an email from Austin July 29, 2009

"The Penguins are from the local beach in Simon’s Town, South Africa. There are thousands of them and you can walk right up to them. They came here a very long time ago from Antarctica. 

They just swam too far north and decided to stay. They’re like the northern most penguins in the world or something like that. It was really cool. 

     

I wanted to pet one, but apparently they bite. Not hard, but still nobody wants to get hurt by a penguin."

Ha! That bolded line made me laugh for a while. To read more about African Penguins click here.

Stories from Afloat

"Gift to the Master"

in an email from Austin July 29, 2009

    

"It is a Navy tradition that after a UNREP (Underway Replenishment) the ships play loud music and offer a “Gift”. A long time ago it was a bottle of wine or something nice for the Captain of the other ship. Now it is more of a joke. 

    

     

So they put us in sumo suits and we fought for the master. At that point in the picture I have fallen over and can’t get back up, in part because I was laughing so hard. Everyone else had a good laugh too. It was hilarious."

    

Tough job, right?

   

To read more than you probably ever needed to know about UNREPs see here.

Introducing...

"Stories from Afloat"

This will be a new type of post for the blog where I post stories that Austin has written to me to give to share with you all! This will probably be the closest he ever gets to an actual blog post, but maybe we can change that when he gets home.

Stay tuned!