4th Deployment: In company with Mine Division 93, Excel sailed from Long Beach on 5 April for the Western Pacific, with stops at Pearl Harbor, Johnston Island, Kwajalein Atoll, and Guam en route.  She departed Subic Bay on 28 May for the first of two patrol periods in support of Operation Market Time.  A description of these operations from Wooden Ships and Iron Men follows: 

In 1965, U.S. Navy ships were directed formally to assist the South Vietnamese Navy in its coastal surveillance and anti-infiltration patrol efforts.  Operation Market Time, a massive combined U.S. Navy and South Vietnamese Navy effort to stop Viet Cong infiltration of weapons and supplies into South Vietnam, was inaugurated on 11 March 1965.  General William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander (of the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam) at the time, estimated that prior to 1965 Viet Cong enemy forces in South Vietnam received about seventy percent of their supplies by sea, a percentage which by the end of 1966 had been reduced to less than ten percent.  In A Soldier Reports, Westmoreland states, “I decided to institute Market Time after South Vietnamese planes during the first two months of 1965 found two big trawlers unloading arms and ammunition along the coast, clear evidence that screening by a fleet of South Vietnamese junks was inadequate.”

On 31 July, the Coastal Surveillance Force (Task Force 115) was formed, with headquarters at Cam Rahn Bay.  Three zones of interdiction were established.  Farthest out to sea, 100 to 150 miles from shore, was an air surveillance zone in which Navy maritime patrol aircraft, operating from bases in the Philippines and Vietnam itself, searched for mother ships that might be supplying the coastal smugglers.  Closer in was an outer surface barrier, patrolled initially by fifteen destroyers or minesweepers and later by radar picket escorts (DER).  In May 1965, U.S. Coast Guard Squadron 3, equipped with 82-foot cutters, arrived on station to patrol this barrier, and by February 1966, 26 cutters were in operation.  Between 1967 and 1971, the force would be augmented by three Royal Australian Navy guided-missile destroyers.  Nearest to shore was an inner or shallow-water barrier.  Here, in addition to the South Vietnamese Junk Force (later renamed the Coastal Force), the Navy deployed 84 Swift boats, 50-foot vessels armed with .50-caliber machine guns and mortars, which darted among the hundreds of shallow coves and inlets that dot South Vietnam’s extensive coastline.

From the Gulf of Tonkin, all the way down the South China Sea to the Cambodian border, a picket line of minesweepers, Coast Guard cutters, destroyer escorts, Swift boats, and patrol aircraft roamed off shore on "Operation Market Time" duty.  Assisted by airborne spotters, the surface units challenged unidentified ships, and searched passing suspect junks and stationary fishing fleets for caches of ammunition and grenades and uniforms, in addition to keeping a constant lookout for supplies being smuggled to the enemy by junk, sampan, or freighter.  Captain Ho Tan Quyen, South Vietnamese Chief of Naval Operations (1960-1963), when asked to describe the most numerous indigenous vessels plying Vietnamese waters, replied: “Junks may be defined as any craft large enough to carry a water buffalo standing athwartships.”

            Excel’s first patrol required her to remain at sea for a period of fifty days as she assisted with the effort to help reduce or eliminate coastal infiltration by the Viet Cong, by boarding and inspecting numerous fishing and cargo junks.  (For this operation, she received both the Armed Forces Expeditionary medal and Vietnam Service medal.) 

            Following a week of upkeep at Subic Bay in late July, she journeyed to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong for eight days of crew liberty, and returned on 7 August to Subic Bay.  On 4 September, following another four weeks of upkeep and availability, she left port to commence her second Market Time patrol, of thirty-four days duration (for which Excel received her second Vietnam Service medal).

            With other units of Mine Division 93, Excel stood out of Subic Bay on 21 October for the Gulf of Panay, located off the west coast of the central Philippines, to participate in a joint U.S./ Philippines minesweeping exercise.  During the two days preceding the 25-28 October exercise, the division made a visit to Iloilo, during which the ship hosted general visiting and conducted a blood drive for the Philippine Red Cross.  From the Gulf of Panay, the units of MinDiv 93 began their return journey to Long Beach, stopping en route in Guam, Kwajelein Atoll, Johnston Island, and Pearl Harbor.  The early portion of the voyage was particularly challenging as the ships encountered a typhoon, described in the below excerpt from Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The U.S. Navy’s Ocean Minesweepers, 1953-1994:

Upon being relieved from patrol by another sweep division, Leader headed home from the Philippines in late 1965.  Traveling north of the Philippines, we were in the classic “H” formation with Leader as flagship in the center and the Lucid, Excel, Guide and Enhance at the four outer points.  We had reports of an incoming storm and right in the middle of the San Bernardino Straights we hit Typhoon Faye.  For several days we experienced the most extreme conditions I had ever seen.  We were taking water over the bridge and that was an open bridge.  During an evening watch I had to take message traffic to the OOD [officer of the deck] on the bridge.  As I finally got there, the OOD turned around and he was wearing a scuba diving mask.  Almost in hysterics, I said to Lieutenant--, “What the hell are you wearing that for, sir”?  About that time, one of the lookouts on the bridge called out “WAVE” and we all hit the deck with me and the lieutenant hanging on to the compass and we were all damn near swept overboard.  As the bow came back up, Lieutenant-- looked at me and said, “Now do you know why I am wearing this f---ing thing?  I can’t see a damn thing without it.” I asked him if he had another one.

Seas were so heavy that while on the bridge I watched the Guide in front of us heel over so far that both screws came out of the water.  When it was all over, one sweep had its steel bow plate ripped off and another had its mast twisted some five or so degrees.  When you ran next to her dead amidships you could see both the port and starboard green minesweeping task lights because the yardarms were twisted so far.

Sleeping at night in the bow-berthing compartment was nearly impossible.  You had to strap yourself in the bunk and then hang on as the ship “went over one [wave] and under two.”  It was the only time on board the lady that I was not quite sure she would hold together.

Following Excel’s arrival in homeport, the remainder of the year was devoted to a holiday leave and upkeep period.