If some sweet Canadian who adores a man in uniform wanted to send a postcard to … oh I dont know…YOU!
Where could she mail it to?
JOC S. S. Kalbach
X-4/PAO
USS Eisenhower (CVN-69) (Cool hull number, huh?)
FPO AE 09532-2830
I thought you guys used pigeons?
They might be better than mail bouys, Coldy!
Our mail bouy watch missed the damn bouy again today! I’m expecting a letter from the folks so I was hoping it’d be aboard today’s mail bouy.
Hopefully, they’ll be able to recover today’s bouy and drop it again tomorrow.
Do they seriously use mail bouys?
And are there actual people whose actual jobs, at least temporarily, are to watch out for mail bouys?
I don’t know why, but this sounds like a joke to me.
Yup. We do.
The bouys are dropped ahead of the ship in it’s expected course. Mail bouy watches are posted.
They notify the bridge when the bouys are sighted, then use hooks on large handles to catch them and bring them aboard as the ship passes them.
Woe betide the young man or woman who misses the mail bouy.
Man…that’s gotta give you a new respect for getting mail. I can’t imagine anybody not keeping their eyes peeled just for the chance to get something. Or out of fear of what everyone else’ll do to them. But, then again, I’m a chickenshit…
Do you get lots of mail, Chief?
He will soon 
do I get some kinda commission for setting you up so beautifully? That was the PERFECT response. You go, girl.
Got’em Chief. Go ahead and reel them in.
Sent anybody for prop wash or line of bearing grease lately?
I used to like to send them out for 5 yards of flightline and some fuse coolant…
So what happens to the missed bouy? You just forget about it? What should I do if I find one? Do you really fish a bouy from the deck of a large ship? How is that possible? Wouldn’t you have to drop a boat? Is all this worth the effort? Can’t you just use fax or email and save yourself a lot of trouble?
Being an electronics type and specializing in satellite comms, my fav was getting one of the boots (newbies) to man the satellite watch. Show’em a picture of the bird, giv’em a pair of 7x50 bi-nocks and point’em to the sky.
The Chief nearly snagged me on that one to. I almost asked “why not just put it on the COD?”
They DO use pigeons. But only when they’ve been at sea a long time. And they’re getting lonely. And those pigeons start strutting around seductively, bobbing their heads in that suggestive way they have…you really can’t blame those poor swabbies for wanting to get some mail from a real woman once they’re DONE using the pigeons.
ducks