U.S. Coast Guard "on station", The

Sea Power, Aug 1999 by Peterson, Gordon I

Teamwork Key to Operational and Support Excellence

Senior Editor Gordon I. Peterson spent three days with the men and women of Coast Guard Group St. Petersburg, Fla., to document their operations.

The terse telephone call to Coast Guard Group St. Petersburg's operations center was received shortly after 9:00 a.m. on 14 June: "Small craft submerged in the intercoastal waterway near Venitian Island; it fell off its davits on the pier overnight. There's an oil spill. St. Petersburg fire department is on the scene."

Within minutes, Boatswain's Mate 2nd Class Bradley Bohnsack, an 11year Coast Guard veteran, ordered Seaman L. David Johnson and Fireman Daniel J. McKinney to make the St. Petersburg Station's 21-foot rigid-hull boat ready for response.

The three-man team was soon underway across the waters of Tampa Bay, moving quickly northward past St. Petersburg's skyline, the city pier, and the expensive homes lining the canals of Florida's intercoastal waterway. Another typical day for the men and women of Coast Guard Group St. Petersburg had begun. As Bohnsack observed, "We're getting into the busy summer season."

Overall, such calls for assistance are on the upswing for the roughly 300 officers and enlisted personnel assigned to the Group and its subordinate units-who are ably assisted by Coast Guard reservists and more than 1,900 Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers.

Between 1994 and 1998, for example, the Group's annual search-and-rescue case load had increased from approximately 1,600 cases in 1994 to more than 2,800 cases during 1998resulting from what the Group's commander, Capt. Walter S. Miller, described as a continuing growth in the recreational boating population along the 500 miles of Florida's Sun Coast that fall within the Group's area of responsibility.

This day's initial mission proved uneventful. Bohnsack and his crew arrived at the scene of the boating mishap to find a 20-foot airboat submerged next to a pier. Heavy overnight rains had filled the boat with water. The boat fell off its lift and submerged when the added weight exceeded the strength of the lift's arms. The sheen of gasoline from the boat's leaking fuel tank was visible in the water. Bohnsack offered technical advice to the owner to assist in the boat's recovery-a challenging task complicated by the weight of the six-cylinder Continental engine in the stern. By the time a Florida State Marine Patrol small craft arrived on the scene at 11:00 a.m., the owner had refloated his airboat, and it rested snugly at its pier. Fuel pollution from the airboat was minimized. The initial spill of several gallons of gasoline soon dispersed and evaporated.

"Something Different Every Time"

Fifteen miles north of St. Petersburg-soon after Bohnsack was completing his after-action report-Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Alejandro Q. Laquian ordered his crew to take in all lines on the USCGC Point Jackson. He slowly backed the 82-foot Point-class patrol boat from its pier at Clearwater Beach, Fla. Laquian, a seasoned veteran of nearly three decades of Coast Guard service, carefully conned his cutter through the shallow, restricted, and crowded channel leading to the Gulf of Mexico. His nine-man crew responded promptly and precisely to his commands in a smart, seaman-like fashion.

Each year, the Point Jackson spends approximately 1,575 hours on patrol in the waters off Florida's west coast performing the Coast Guard's standard combination of multiple missionsmaritime law enforcement, search and rescue, port security, boating safety, humanitarian service, and protection of natural marine resources. A typical monthly cycle may entail two three-day patrols interspersed with shorter missions, on-call response periods, and "down" time at the pier for maintenance. In the words of one Point Jackson crewman, "We do something different every time we go out." Constant training and requalification for law-enforcement duties are also the order of the day.

To the south of St. Petersburg, another Point-class patrol boatUSCGC Point Countess-adheres to a similar routine from its station at Nokomis, Fla. Both patrol boats are approaching 30 years of service. Three 110-foot Island-class patrol boats will replace them next year. With their 2,000-mile range, the replacement cutters will improve the Group St. Petersburg's reach into the Gulf of Mexico for drug-interdiction and other priority missions.

Last November, Point Jackson teamed with the U.S. Customs Service and seized 220 pounds of cocaine after boarding the motor vessel Chios Charm outside the Port of Tampa. A stowaway on the 600-foot Panamanian vessel planned to jump overboard with his drug stash and swim to shore before the ship pulled into port. "We got on board and did a safety boarding to start, then once the vessel crossed the 12-mile zone we started our tactical sweep of the ship," said Petty Officer 2nd Class John Brogan, a crewman aboard the Point Jackson. U.S. Customs agents later arrested five men in conjunction with the drug-interdiction operation.