The following is an email from RD3 Michael McElroy who served aboard the Prime 66 - 68.  He mentioned the beach party we had in DaNang in 67.  He has some pictures of it I hope he finds them soon.

 

Paul,
 
Thanks for the update.  I went back to the Ship's history section for '67.  It states that we were in Da Nang on 26 Mar 67 and 5-8 May 67.  I bet that period in May is when we had that beach party we've talked about.  Boy, that Jerry is just a wealth of information.
besides the "uniform of the day" the thing I remember the most about that day was when some of us were standing around the fantail a little while after we had crossed the line, a snipe (FN or FA, I don't remember who) came back and was looking all around.  It went something like this:
 
Snipe:  Damn I missed it!
Us:  Missed what?
Snipe:  The International Date Line.
Us:  You should have seen it.  It was a beautiful golden line as far as you could see.  Yeah, and there were these beautiful golden marker buoys.  We even painted one.
Snipe: (deeply disappointed)  I was on watch in the engine room.  So I didn't get to see it.
Us:  Don't worry, we'll see it again on the way back.
Snipe: Oh yeah!
With that he walked back toward the messdeck grinning from ear to ear.
 
If I recall, we volunteered to extend our deployment to go on a Minex in Australia, but of course, it never happened. thus no crossing the Equator.
Mike
San Diego
89NM and 40 years from Pier 9