It was our first bus trip out of the yards aboard Trepang and the crew was pretty excited about going to Puerto Rico in the early spring of 83 (If I remember correctly). The trip down from New London was quite eventless but this would all change when we arrived in Rosy Roads. 

Now , being a new crew with hardly any knowledge of what we were doing
and most of the crew being dinq's and non-quals, we were ready for our first port of call ( we have had much training in how to conduct ourselves on liberty in the shipyards , just check any of the police records for Trepangatangers in Portsmouth or Kittery during our stay in the yards). Upon our arrival we had gotten word that the pride of the Navy was going to stop and visit us (hey,it was OUR port this was unacceptable). 

The following day the USS Ticonderoga , the first AGIS cruiser was moored on a near-by pier. As darkness fell upon us and the crew proceeded to consume their weight in cocktails, libations, beer, etc. It came to our attention that we were going to be restricted to the pier, so we were escorted by armed SP's to our boat. The Captain (who was a full bird now) found this insulting, and stationed our own armed guards to keep the &^8#ing world off our pier. After that, the weapons dept. felt it our duty to launch a counter attack.

So out came the submarine black paint (still on board from the yards) and an emergency life raft (this WAS an emergency wasn't it?) and off went selected weapons dept. crew lead by the weapons officer to pronounce the Ticonderoga as our target ship. This was done successfully, and there were pictures in the San Juan newspapers to prove it.

After the great feeling of such a tactical success we realized had worn off the next morning there was a lot of hell to pay! And the Ticonderoga was re-painted by the selected weapons dept. crew .If you look at some of the early pictures of the Ticonderoga, her starboard side is a little blotched!