Ask a Sailor.

[SteelCurtain]

Can you swim, sailor?

I can, yes. I am actually qualified as a 2nd Class Swimmer (which isn't common within my rate). What's actually pretty funny is the amount of people who join the Navy that don't know how to swim. In bootcamp, hundreds of people go to the pool at once to test their capabilities in water. In the beginning, they ask if there is anyone who already knows that they will need remedial training. Literally dozens of people stood up for that training. It amused me that people who can't swim at all decided to join the Navy of all branches.

There were a couple of seniors at the Academy who decided to quit and not graduate (one was a NAPSter with me, so 5 years of school) because they would not jump off the 10m platform. Which is a requisite for graduation because you might need to jump off a ship at some point, and a lot of our ships have decks higher than 10m.

One of them, I was up on the platform with her, trying to convince her not to quit on her whole career for 1.2 seconds of fear.

Side note, one of the qualifications you have to pass when you get to the Academy, Jericho, is something called the 40 year swim. You have to swim, in khakis, for 40 minutes straight without touching the wall, bottom, or ropes. It's not hard, but definitely put Vaseline on your nipples. Pro tip.