This is USS Guam LPH-9, in which me'n a bunch of my pals once cruised the Caribbean just like Fixer's fixin' to do. What our cruise lacked in posh, it made up for in length. Boy, did it ever, almost 4 months.
She was 592 feet in length, with a beam of 84 feet. About half the size of that party barge the Fixers are goin' in. I think it was a lot noisier up on the roof of Guam as well.
We trained at Camp Fernando Luis Garcia on Vieques PR, and pulled liberty at San Juan PR and Bridgetown, Barbados BWI. We were supposed to go to St. Croix, but duty called and we went and patrolled down around the Dominican Republic in case they needed us. They didn't, but they gave us all the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal anyway. That made me eligible to join the Veterans of Foreign Wars. That's a hell of a lot better way to do it than actually going to war.
There wasn't no interwebs, cell phones, iPods, video games, none of that stuff in those days. You had to special order to get an FM radio in a car! The hot new deal in entertainment was reel-to-reel tape recorders. About the size of a suitcase, with foldout speakers. Some of the guys had transistor radios, but they didn't work inside a steel ship in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles from a station. We settled for "The Rockin' Rob Rondy Show" on onboard station WGUM. Near as I could tell, it was available from stem to stern on the intercom, broken into by such official shit as "Sweepers, man your brooms!". The other entertainment available was lightin' farts or goin' and starin' at the ocean. Gourmet dining? Suffice it to say we got three meals a day. Dancing? Don't get caught!
I just know the Fixers will have nearly as much fun on their cruise as I did on mine. Heh.
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