There's an old saying that the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is that a fairy tale starts off with "Once upon a time" and a sea story starts off with "This is no shit."

Here in these pages is a heaping pile of "This is no shit" and it starts with the notion that in the Navy, the cardinal rule is: If you can't pay attention, take notes.

When does this rule apply? In the Navy, all the time: when training for war includes playing pinochle, when you're mistaken for an NIS agent, when Robert Mitchum (yes, that Robert Mitchum) stops by your barracks for a beer or two, when advancing in the Navy is one damn thing after another.

The fun frolic through the sea stories of a Navy "lifer" (seen partly through the eyes of his Navy brat daughter) includes a series of adventures and misadventures when he commandeers an Army jeep in Vietnam, discovers that some side work in New Jersey was mob-related, and commutes to the ship via helicopter.

Hear that? They're piping us aboard. Let's weigh anchor and get the sea stories underway!