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 News from Around Banderas Bay | January 2006 
Gettin' Busy with the Navy League!
 Peter Gray - PVNN
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| | USS Higgins painting Asociación Feminil Vallartense | 
| | Mexican Navy – Unloading medical supplies from USCG Morgenthau | 
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| | USCG Morgenthau painting Asociación Feminil Vallartense |
The last few days have been unusually busy for our local Navy League volunteers who work with U.S. Naval and Coast Guard ships visiting Puerto Vallarta. While ships normally visit at one or two month intervals, 2006 kicked off with three ships scheduled to dock within days of each other.
As it turned out, however, the USS Ford, carrying two large containers of medical supplies down from San Diego for distribution to local institutions here, was diverted at sea. The current whereabouts of the containers is therefore unknown. Opportunities to get these large containers shipped down do not occur all that often, so fingers are now crossed that they will show up as soon as the ship’s normal duties permit.
The next ship due in was the USS Higgins. And she did arrive on schedule. A visit to the offices and workshops of the Asociación Feminil Vallartense had been set up for a party of ship’s volunteers to give the entire establishment a fresh coat of white paint. The Asociación Feminil aids abused women and children with counseling and job training opportunities and is always very deserving of support.
Following the Higgins, came the US Coast Guard Cutter Morganthau. This is a pretty large ship by Coast Guard standards. As one of the crew explained it to me, “It’s the biggest we’ve got, if you don’t count the ice-breakers.” A party of 28 out of the ship’s complement of around 160 arrived at the Femenil Vallartense location to finish off the white paint work and to do some fancy plumbing.
This involved a lot of copper tubing being run from the existing water supply and across to another building where a sink was waiting to be hooked up. This will be used in connection with a beautician training program. I asked Ensign Pamela Wade, the ship’s Communications Officer, if she had been on a similar work-party before. “Oh, yes.” she said. “In San Francisco - Habitat for Humanity, you know!” I don’t know why I was surprised – I guess I was assuming she would name a rather less developed country. Incidentally, and maybe it is a sign of the times - all three of the officers working on this day were women.
The Morganthau also brought down fourteen boxes of medical supplies. These were delivered to the DIVAC warehouse for distribution. Dr. Peter Gordon, who acts as an invaluable link between the arrival of supplies and their eventual delivery to the most suitable locations, now gets the job of allocating the items to their final destination.
The Navy Leaguers principally involved in orchestrating these visits were Jeff Miltenberger, Dusty Graham and Bill Clark. |
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