My daughter decided to live stream ship selection on our TV in the living room shortly after dinner. I had watched a replay of the 2019 version so I felt that I would be able to come across as very knowledgeable (for once!) on how things were working and what would be the most desirable place to be based out of.
Things didn’t quite go as planned for 2020. I made the broad sweeping statement/prediction that Rota, Spain would be, by far, the most desirable location to be based out of as it was, by far, in 2019. There were Midshipmen-choreographed Spanish dances and lots of fist pumping celebration to go to Rota which was entirely off the board easily within the 1st 20 picks in 2019.
Fast forward to 2020 and nobody was touching Rota with a 10 foot pole. Sadly all of the ships based out of Rota, the very exciting port in Spain, are now in probably the northern Indian Ocean or worse yet, the Persian Gulf.
Last year, I gave up watching the 2019 installment before I ever found out that there were actual Naval bases in Annapolis, Maryland and Mayport, Florida. Who knew?!? Literally, no one had chosen these two rather boring/mundane sounding home ports (to me) in the United States for 2019 - everyone was going for forward-deployed bases with better geographic locations.
The reality of what these young people could be asked to do in their future seems to have sunk in or at least crossed some minds or maybe I just read this all long.