I know what fighter pilots felt like when Top Gun came out!
Seriously, this is so freaking cool.
So here is the fact about me and why I'm overly excited about this movie.
I went to Boat College. Yeah that's a real place. Where you get actual college credit for learning how to tie knots and what is in a life boat.
Bailer
Bilge pump
Boat hooks
Buckets
Can opener
If you are reading this and you just finished my list with 'compass' then you know what I'm talking about. If you didn't, sorry you can't cheat by watching a marathon of Deadliest Catch. (Those guys are NOT my shipmates. They are insane lunatics with a death wish and serious impulse control issues.)
My shipmates include Captains of some of the largest vessels on the ocean, tugboats and cruise ships, port engineers and lawyers. Environmental clean up specialists and building managers for skyscrapers.
Boat school is surprisingly more versatile than you might think.
But none of that is important right now.
Mearsk Alabama was Captained by an Alumni of my school. Richard Phillips.
This isn't' like when some UNC grad finds another UNC grad. Thousands of kids go there and none of them have anything more in common than a piece of paper.
Massachusetts Maritime Academy is different.
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| Training Ship Patriot State |
It's not a regular college.
We call them sea stories, although not all of them involve the sea.
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| Me (on the right) and my roommate about to initiate some pollywogs into Neptune's realm. |
Stories of trips to foreign lands and insane feats pulled off under the normally watchful eye of a commanding officer. Stories about the mid watch or the hand rail cooling system.
Most of them make us laugh out loud while strangers listen in horror.
What is so funny about being made to stand with your flashlight on your head screaming "I'm a lighthouse." over and over again? Or about being woken up by a screaming man at 3 am to run into the ocean surf and then roll around in the sand fully clothed?
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| This is me dressed and ready for a lifeboat drill. |
The point of this is when you are watching Shane Murphy be all hero like I want you to think about me yelling at him to swab a deck, or needle gun some rust. That was how he spent his freshman cruise.
Pretty sure that's why he didn't crack under pressure.
That or he comes from a good family that raised him to be an honorable man.
Nah. I'm taking credit. I was really good at yelling.
Was? Sorry, good point. I AM really good at yelling.
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| Bottom row all the way to the right, me. |
“Sir/Ma’am. Mine is not to question why. Mine is but to do or die. Mine is not to
question how. Mine is but to do it now, Sir/Ma’am.”
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