Mom & Dad Francom Come to Visit

April 23rd thru April 28th

Mom & Dad Francom came to visit Heather. It was very nice. We did a lot of shopping and eating at good restaraunts. We had some great bonding time. The best part of the visit was the night we spent at the San Diego temple and also the game of Nerts we played.
Thanks Mom & Dad for coming!!

Brandon passed his ESWS test

Brandon passed his ESWS test on 4-25-04!!! Brandon has been studying for his ESWS since he got on his ship in January of 2002. It has been very tough for him to do since he has so many responsibilities on the ship. There is a lot to getting the ESWS. You pretty much have to know about every part of the ship and everyones jobs on the ship. You have to go around and get people in every job on the ship to sign stuff showing that they have talked with him about their job and then you take a test on it all. After this test he has to go in front of two boards. He is very excited to get this over with. It's a very big accomplishment. I am very proud of Brandon!!!

Brandon Visits Ecuador

April 23, 2004
Today we pulled into Ecuador! We pulled into a big fishing port and they
don't have pier services that can handle us so we had to anchor out and ride
liberty boats in and out of port. Once they put down Liberty Call, myself
and 6 other guys from the ship went to wait in line to get on a liberty
boat. Unfortunately, the boat that we had to get on turned out to be our
ship's RHIB (Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat)... it's those military boats that
look like rafts but have pretty fast outboard motors and can go a pretty
good speed... so we loaded in and took off... everyone thought it was going
to be pretty cool to be able to ride in the RHIB... *NOT*!!! I don't know
what the sea-state was at the time, but the waves were decent-sized and as
we cruised through the water they would hit the side of the RHIB and crash
over us... by the time we got to shore, I was DRENCHED from head to toe! We
spent most of our time between two places: the mall (they only have one, and
it's fairly small... about the size of the one in St. George, except
two-story), and a local little dive where we went to eat and play pool. The
mall was a trip, though! The parking lot had 3 watch-towers like you would
see in a castle and at the top of the towers they had armed guards watching
the parking lot... and I'm not talking about "armed" with batons and
hand-guns, either... I'm talking about sawed-off shotguns and AR-15's
(soviet-style M-16's)!!! The mall was really nice, but wierd also... they
had a hardware store similar to Home Depot inside the mall, and they also
had a grocery store inside the mall. Walking around inside the mall were
more guards with AR-15's and at the entrance to the grocery store was a
guard with a sawed-off shotgun). It was crazy! The second day in we went
and saw a movie (about half of them were still in English but just with
spanish sub-titles), hung around the mall some more (they have a pretty good
fake version of Carl's Jr., for those of you who know what that is!), I got
a haircut and got the back of my neck and my sideburns trimmed with a
straight razor for the first time ever, and did a bit more shopping. We
then went to a nice little outdoor restaraunt on the other side of town...
it was nice, but didn't look superb, just quaint. But let me tell you what,
the food was OUTSTANDING! A couple of the guys got "Super T-Bones"... those
things were over 2 inches THICK! Myself and one of the other guys ordered
Blue Marlin Swordfish... we weren't expecting much because it only cost
$4.70... but we knew it was local and fresh b/c all day long we saw huge
dump-trucks full of tuna and swordfish going from the pier to a warehouse.
LOTS AND LOTS OF FISH! So we figured the fish would be good. When they
brought it out, it was amazing... it wasn't like in the States when you
order and pay $15 and get a little cube cut of fish... this thing filled up
the ENTIRE PLATE! It was AT LEAST a foot long! And it turned out to be the
BEST TASTING fish that I have *EVER* had! It was awesome! It was easily a
$30 plate of fish in the States! My whole meal, including the appetizers,
sodas, and tip, came to $10! Let me tell you what, fish must be like GOLD
in Ecuador... these trucks were STILL running back and forth between the
warehouse and the pier at 8 o'clock at night when we went back to the ship.
Once they got one loaded up, they would put an armed guard standing on top
of the load as it drove through the city! How's that for insane??? It was
a nice country, but you could tell that it could be a very dangerous place.
The only thing I regret is that we didn't do the dive here... I ended up
hearing that it was AWESOME! Hopefully we'll be back!

Brandon and friends out to dinner


Brandon's friends King and Cornish messing around at the mall.

Drake Island, Panama

Brandon writes...
Hey all! Got underway today from Panama. We were there for about 2 days
and though it was a pretty brief Port Call, I enjoyed some *GOOD* liberty!
The first day we pulled in I had duty so I had to stay on the boat, stand
watch, help bring on fresh food, mail, parts and supplies, that sort of
thing. The next morning I woke up early, cleaned the ship, ate breakfast
and was off the boat before 9AM. Myself and 2 other guys from the boat had
arranged to go diving. Our ship pulled had pulled into the western part of
the Panama Canal and was moored up to a pier there. Our tour guide picked
us up there at the pier and drove us into Panama City where we met our
Master Diver and picked him up. We then drove across country (about a 2
hour drive) to the Atlantic side of Panama, technically the Carribean, to a
small dive resort. It was third world, but it was definitely COOL! It was
run by a family of 4, they had a small dive gear shop to rent us any of the
gear we needed, 3 showers, a place to setup our rigs, test and inspect them,
and to relax while we were getting ready, and a small restaurant... it was
all basically in the back-yard of this place which was also their house on
the inside. The rest of the backyard was the beach with a small pier and a
couple of very small but long boats similar to a no-frills fishing boat with
an outboard motor. Once we were ready to go, we hauled our gear to the
boat, jumped in and off we went. There were 4 other guests who were there
but had only reserved the boat to take them to a secluded beach where they
were going to hang out and snorkel for about 6 hours... other than that, we
had the resort and boat all to ourselves! We took them to their beachfront,
which looked *VERY* nice and had no roads into it, dropped them off, and
headed to our spot about 20 min. out from the beach. Our location was just
off of an island and when we got there the boat driver tied the boat up to a
buoy, we put on our gear and prepared to jump in... I was a little nervous
at first, since this was my first boat dive, my first dive outside the U.S.,
my first dive with any of these people, and more importantly: my first dive
with gear serviced by someone other than Ralph (the guy we get our gear from
in San Diego)! But, after jumping in I quickly found that all my gear
worked great and my fears subsided. We went down to about 30 feet and the
visibility was GREAT! Eventually we made it down to as low as 60 feet and
probably would have went lower but that was all the lower it got anywhere in
the area we were at! On the guys' gages said he actually made it to 65
feet, but other than that it didn't get any lower. The first dive was
mostly large, open spaces filled with all sorts of strange ocean plants,
coral the size of 2 adult heads and shaped like a large brain, small
glowing-blue fish, and even a very small species of star-fish. Not the
normal star-fish you'd normally think of. This one fit into the palm of my
hand... each of it's legs were hair-thin with whispy hair-like tentacles
branching off of each leg. It was *VERY* flexible and could bend it's
little hair-limbs every which way as it tried to crawl out of our hands, and
it was translucent and very very light-weight. I found a small sand-dollar
that I wanted to take back to Heather as a souvenir, but unfortunately it
broke while I was swimming because it was so fragile... After 45 min.,
we came to the surface, hopped back in the boat and headed back for lunch:
rice and OCTOPUS!!! And man, it was FANTASTIC! I could have easily had a
second plate! We relaxed for about 2 hours and went back out for our second
dive... a slightly different location this time, but still off of Drake
Island. This spot though was even cooler than the first! We descended to
just shy of 60 feet on this dive and we were in the water almost a full
hour. For any fellow divers who might be working the tables for us, you
might notice this appears to work AGAINST the tables (NAUI tables,
anyways)... we found that out as well, AFTER the dive... but never fear, our
Master Diver was using a computer which as you probably know, gives you more
flexibility with times and depths. This dive consisted mainly of canyons...
big ones too, I am talking that in several areas we were down at 60 feet of
water and on both sides of us were canyon walls that rose all the way up to
maybe just 10 feet shy of the surface!!! It was *VERY* cool! Several areas
actually took us into caves, or tunnels, at least 30 feet long... at one
point I saw a big globe on the ocean floor and I decided to go check it
out... as I got closer I noticed it had a whole in it... I figure it must be
some sort of strange plant. I fanned some water into the opening to wash
some dirt out of it in an attempt to sea if anything was living in it...
didn't appear so. I then nudged the plant to see if it would do anything
(some underwater plants can actually move, like Venus fly-traps)... nope, no
motion... and instead of being 'spongy' like a plant, it seemed fairly
hard... keep in mind I was wearing 3mm wet-suit gloves so the 'feel' of
things is a bit dull... I tried to push it a bit, and... oh oh, it rolled
right over!!! Did I break it??? It seemed to have no sort of roots or
anything attaching itself to the ocean bottom... and then I realized it: IT
WAS A COCONUT!!! Hahaha.... yep, 20 minutes from the beach, 60 feet down,
here was a coconut. So I grabbed it to show the others and before you knew
we were all tossing it around (as best as a coconut can BE tossed around
underwater!) in a mock game of Underwater Coconut-Football. It was a blast!
Towards the end of the dive, our Master Diver pulled out his underwater
writing tablet (yes, it really works!) and wrote one word on it while
pointing behind us: "BARRACUDA"... unfortunately by the time he wrote it, we
read it, and looked... it had dissappeared behind a canyon wall... he said
it was a good sized one too... and no, I don't think he was trying to tease
us since we saw 3 of 4 them swimming around while we were on the pier. In
the end I got to enjoy the best visibility I've ever seen underwater (at
times it was as great as 30 feet), the warmest water (80-some-odd degress...
we dove 'skins', which is just to say that we went in our bathing suits with
no wet-suit other than gloves and boots), the most tropical of underwater
life that I've yet seen, and the best liberty call I've yet experienced, bar
none! It was very sad as we piled our gear back into the van and got back
on the road for our return trip across the country... once we returned we
got some local pizza, which was NOTHING like American Pizza but still good,
and headed to the phone shack to call home! It was a GREAT call... I really
loved hearing Heather's voice on the other end! She let me say 'hello' to
Tazzy too to see if she'd understand... we're not sure if she did though...
Heather said she started trying to play around, so maybe she knew it was me!
Unfortunately the call seemed like it was 15 minutes instead of the 40
minutes that the card promised... after that it was back to the ship and
pack up to get underway the next day. And underway, we did! Back at sea
now, and as they say: "No News is Good News!"

Zenno, Cornish and Brandon




Brandon found a coconut far away from land.

Brandon Visits Panama

The USS Valley Forge pulled into Panama Tuesday April 12th. Brandon had duty that day and was unable to leave the ship. He was going on a scuba diving excursion across the country to the other side which is only about 2 hours away. He will be diving in the Caribbean Sea. Brandon will be calling me tonight when he gets back from his excursion so I will have the details of his visit to Panama on our website soon.

Brandon visits Guatemala

Brandon writes "Well, we just pulled out of Guatemala late last night... we had only pulled in for a few hours to take on fuel... we got in yesterday morning and pulled out at night... we couldn't leave the pier and all they had were a few vendors selling trinkets and one phone with 10 minute expensive phone cards... and we were only given one hour to leave the boat and go out there anyways and there was only 60 cards to go around for the entire ship... it was pretty crappy.
Guatemala looked nice as far as there were a LOT of trees and it was pretty green... couldn't see the city, that's how many trees there were..."

Brandon Gets O.C. Pepper Spray Qualified

Brandon got O.C. Pepper Spray Qualified on Saturday March 27th. It was a painful experience. Painful in the fact that to be qualified you have to be sprayed in the face with it. Keep in mind that the military version is a lot stronger than the civilian pepper spray. Brandon had no idea what he was in for. Even after they dunked his head in water Brandon was still in so much pain that it took him about 4 hours of standing directly in front of an air conditioner to be able to walk around. Brandon said "I guess I just wasn't designed for Chemical Warfare!" Brandons doing fine now though. Here are some pictures of him in front of the air conditioner.

Doesn't he look handsome?!