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Heh, well you coulda been on more than one, right? I was on the JFK and we went to Dubrovnik as well.

Great time...beautiful women with long hair...:)

I remember finding a little teeny, tiny french restaurant with four or five tables in it, right down on the water in a small cove. I was so proud of myself, that I had found this out of the way place with no other sailors in it!

I don’t remember if the food was good, but there were those french postcards with naked women all over the walls...

They made us wear our uniforms, which was not bad because the people seemed to really like Americans. I got into a pickup basketball game with a bunch of Yugoslavs, and scuffed the toe of my corofram so badly I had to buy new ones. (I tried to fix it by melting it a little with a lighter, but no luck!)

We did a late 1977-early 78 MED Cruise and stopped there. Everything was going fine till the storm hit. I mean we had almost no warning. The anchor started dragging and the Old Man got on the 1MC yelling get the ship underway get the ship underway now. Deckhouses were down. We'd sent the boats to the beach. I was also a Boat Snipe that cruise but was off duty when it hit. As the anchor and deck house came up the screws started boiling up and she began to back out. It was a close call. Our Captain was an ex-POW one of the longest held. He made Rear Admiral on that that cruise.

BTW when the Iranian Hostage Crisis broke out in 79 weren't you guys the ones who drew short straw at first? We were at NOB Norfolk waiting to go into drydock in another week or so. The ship went on alert and it was decided that night which carrier would deploy and we would go on in to Portsmouth. Now I'm not sure now which one had to go if it was maybe JFK at first and it then got rescinded. The ship would have been needed in the PG and back then that meant a trip down around the Cape and back up.

Two carrier groups were already on station in the MED back then. That night they finally released us. A bunch of orders came down in that time frame including they had ordered us to change home port to Mayport aafter the 1981 cruise I think. But I think Reagans Sec of Def rescinded that order because the change didn't happen. I was out in Oct 80 so it wouldn't have mattered.

Yea I remember Dubrovnik being a uniform only port. I walked around some in my Boat Crew coveralls near Fleet Landing. Another weird one a first for us was actually tieing up pier side in France either on that cruise of the 79 cruise for all the good it did us. We still had to steam due to electrical load issues.

My first deployment we took a trip down to RIO in mid 1977. Got my Royal Summons then my Shellback ceertificate LOL. I doubt seriously the hazing we took crossing the equator would be allowed today especially kissing the Royal Baby LOL. I know the hazing {iniation} we had in Engineering would be a Court Martial offense now. Things sure change.