Tuesday, November 11, 2014

This Was My Ride

This was my ride from 1981 until 1984. She's the USS Clifton Sprague (FFG-16) and she's pictured transiting the Kennebec River. I'm a Plankowner, a member of the crew that commissioned her in Bath, Maine. Her homeport was Mayport, Florida during the time I served aboard her. In those three years we visited Halifax, Newport, Yorktown, Port Everglades,  Freeport, Guantanamo, Roosevelt Roads, Fort-de-France, St. Vincent, Panama, Honduras, Gaeta, Livorno, La Spezia, Piraeus, Bahrain and Karachi. We stopped to refuel in Bermuda, the Azores, Rota and Djibouti. We transited the Straits of Gibraltar, Messina, Mandab and Hormuz. We crossed the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal. We supported operations in Lebanon after the bombing of the US Embassy. We were stationed in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. We supported operations during Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada. We were stationed in the Gulf of Fonseca monitoring weapon shipments between the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and rebels in El Salvador. We supported the US Coast Guard's efforts intercepting drug smugglers off the Southeast coast of the US. We raided Soviet anchorages off the coast of Libya. We helped repair orphanages in Tela, Honduras. Our breakaway song was "On The Road Again" by Willie Nelson, our talisman was Ziggy and our motto was "Nunc Paratus."