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Action. They're just really chaos on the water at this point. Danger. She's
your captain and she's fearless and you gotta be fearless too. Adventure. Next
thing I know my sailor is diving into the ring and the crowd is getting louder.
You're listening to Sea Story.
Episode 22 "Port-To-Port," a three-part story. Hi, it's lieutenant commander
Mark Wrenchler I've been the navy coming up on 28 years and I have a lot of advice for
a lot of the young sailors out there. You're gonna see awesome places when you
deploy you're gonna go all over the world. Let me tell you something a bar in
Naples, Italy looks the same as a bar in Norfolk, Virginia, San Diego, California,
Bremerton, Washington, Mayport, Florida they're all pretty much the same. What
you need to do is you need to get out and see the world!
Think about this you're 18-19 years old go on your first deployment you get back
friends are gonna say, "hey what did you do?" are you going to tell them "oh well I hung out
in all these cool bars." What fun is that? When you tell them that you went up to
Rome you went to the Coliseum, you went to the Sistine Chapel, you want the St.
Peter's Basilica, and tell them about what you saw there that's gonna make an impression.
That's something some of your friends
and relatives may never get to do. The Navy's paying for you to go to all these
places. Life is all about experiences use the time that you have in the Navy where
they send you to experience things.
Chapter One, "Djibouti" My name is Nasir Pringle, I'm a second class in engineer
United States Navy and I'm from South Carolina and this is my Sea Story. I'm
gonna take you guys to a deployment in 2016. We went to a Mediterranean tour I
want to talk about the trip to Djibouti, Africa, we got to go off and help the
local community out here and uh it was more of a desert type terrain we
basically went out there in the trash pickup to the valleys. It was like no
water to be found so we're just walking picking up trash helping the locals and
finally, we get to this oasis type cave it was like inside of a mountain.
So everyone took their shoes off and then we just started swimming the water
was so clear without goggles or anything you can just look in the
water and see all the different like fishes and all that stuff like that.
We're just thinking that this is it taking a little swim session in this
little pond and then the guys signal for us to keep going we're going down this
little river of some sort it almost seems as if we were swimming underneath
land. It was kinda like this little tunnel and it's probably like a 10-second hold
your breath type tunnel. So, once we got through that tunnel, it was like a whole
different world. The water was clear blu, it had like a few
waterfalls in there we also got the chance to actually climb up on the rocks
and jump off into the pool with everyone clapping. The locals were
showing us a few of their tricks you know flipping up the rocks
and mind you although this is inside of a cave it was beautiful. I never thought
that I would actually go to a real-life oasis. I joined to travel the world
and help other people it's fun to say that you could go across the world and
not only travel but help others and also have fun doing it.
Chapter 2, "Jordan" My name is James Verges
I'm from Fremont, California and this is my Sea Story. So February 2017 my deploying
team left and we been to Jordan. That was humbling seeing the lost city of Petra,
kind of satisfied that thirst for knowledge considered one of the wonders
of the world. I just see these old buildings carved and silent and
historian telling you about it like we feel like we can see the people living
here how it'll work how to function. The bus right there is ridiculous.
So you start from the period
you drive along the sign it's like an oasis like everything by the water was
green and lush and then when you look further out it just goes dead and buried.
We're going through the hills it's like pretty boring it's kind of hot like very
Indiana Jones desert looking and as you're coming up to the city you see
like this commercialized area as you're going down the hill and you keep winding
down this hill, until you start with this park. You pay for your emissions ticket and then
you hike down into this mountain like you literally go into this
mountain and you see rocks that have been carved by the wind and sand like
making those intricate colors like layered sandstone reds, pinks, yellows,
browns, and like trees growing out of crevices among craziest of places.
Unless you walk into this beautiful wrong place you know taking pictures
it's the cool breeze is coming through like you're filling yourself it opens up
into like the first building that you see which is most popular portion of
velocity of Petra is this tall cut in building into the wall you see
Griffon the lion on the right and Noah statue on the left and it's in such
articulate detail. So Perta will forever be a favorite of mine deployment
everything is times ten kid you not. So, when you have those good moments you
really soak them in and that's when you really find value what is good and
what's necessary and what's the important things in life.
Chapter Three, "Utah." This is Kyle Young I am originally from a small town just
outside Philadelphia called Chalfont, Pennsylvania and this is my Sea Story.
My first duty station aside from all of my schooling was assault craft unit 4 which
is based out of joint expeditionary base Little Creek. I was assigned there as a
electronics technician basically a float training group comes along and makes
sure that everyone's doing their maintenance properly and I had two spot
checks with the same person. So I ended up going through both my spot checks
with this chief and he ended up highly recommending me because I was able to
prove to him I had done everything correctly within about the span of half
an hour. Apparently, that blew him away so much he
recommended me to my chain of command. My chain of command obviously took notice
of that because being a very junior in fact the most junior person at the
shop at the time that was a huge deal.
I don't know why they were taking me away to the hangar bay they didn't tell
me I was going to be there to actually receive an award. We ended up going on a
trip to Salt Lake City, Utah now this trip was Salt Lake City, Utah I did not
pay a dime for it. I was selected to go out there to Salt
Lake City for the Department of Defense maintenance Level Awards. Obviously this
is a huge honor for me I've only been in for about two and a half years in total
and so naturally I was a little nervous about it seeing as I was going to be
going with my captain, my new commanding officer,
the maintenance officer, a lot of high ranking officers a lot of more senior
enlisted Chiefs and then there's just ET3 Young tagging along with them.
There were probably some of the best two days of my life.
So we went out to Salt Lake City, Utah and if you've ever been to Salt Lake
City, Utah it is a beautiful little city and it's basically in the middle of a
crater surrounded by mountains and of course we went in December time so it's
all covered in snow very pristine looking and of course we a little bit of
free time before we had to be ready for the ceremonial dinner and the practices
before it. So myself and an HD3 decided we go climb a mountain, we were about
6,000 feet up in the air looking at across beautiful snow-covered vistas
looking down at Salt Lake City itself and then the Salt Lake way off in the
distance and one of the most beautiful things I could possibly imagine.
Something I never certainly imagined being able to do especially so early in
my career and I've never pictured I would be sent to Salt Lake City as part
of the Navy. I never thought joining the Navy I would
ever have the chance to go travel somewhere like that for free, I never
even considered that and now because of that let's open my eyes up a little bit
about seeing you know what else is out there what's over that next hill!
Sea Story brought to you by America's Navy. Learn more at Navy.com.
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