Coast guard brings order to varied fleet of 1,500 boats

Sea Power, Aug 2003 by Vergun, David

Safety, Repair, Readiness, Training Diminished by Dizzying Array of Small Craft

Too many types of boats can cause too many big headaches.

That is the opinion of Capt. Dana Goward and his employer, the U.S. Coast Guard.

When Goward, a Coast Guard aviator, landed the job of chief of the Coast Guard's Office of Boat Forces at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C., five years ago, he immediately realized that there was a problem. The Coast Guard had literally dozens of different types of boats.

"We had about 1,500 boats," Goward said, "which included dozens of boat styles and sizes ranging anywhere from 19 to 52 feet long, made by Zodiac, Boston Whaler, Monarch, Safe Boat, and others; twin-engined, single-engined, two-stroke engines, four-stroke engines, inboard, outboard, fiberglass hull, aluminum hull, and on and on." Local commanders had carte blanche authority to purchase almost any type of boat they needed, and they even could make their own special modifications. You could begin to see the picture when you do the math, Goward said: 188 stations, 60 aids-to-navigation stations, and dozens of Marine Safety Offices, each permitted to purchase different types of boats.

"By contrast," Goward noted, "in the aviation community, there are only two types of helicopters, the HH-65 and the HH-60, and two fixed-wing aircraft, the C-130 and [HU-25] Falcon jets."

The Problem

So what is the problem with so many types of boats?

"Plenty," Goward said. "Readiness, safety, maintenance, and training all can and have suffered from the hodgepodge. It can take anywhere from two to three years to train a highly proficient response boat coxswain and four or five years for a surf response boat coxswain, or surfman. Retraining a coxswain when he transfers to a new duty station on a different boat model with different handling characteristics is inefficient.

"Similarly," Goward continued, "a machinist's mate who went to school to learn how to fix a four-stroke Honda boat engine will need to return to school if he transfers to another station that uses two-stroke Mercury engines. And repair of fiberglass and aluminum hulls requires two entirely different skill sets."

Goward also cited problems with safety and readiness, noting that different makes and models of boats handle differently with regard to changing sea conditions and mission requirements, and that having a new learning curve every time personnel transfer decreases their initial proficiency in boat handling and increases reaction times.

Among the different systems that affect safety and readiness are radars, global positioning systems, navigation, and radios; procedures such as manning rescue pumps and programming information into control panels; and locations for stowage of helmets, life preservers, and rescue equipment.

The Solution

When Coward realized there were problems with so many boat types, he mapped out and set in motion a transition plan to standardize all of the service's shore-based response boats into just four classes, said Cdr. Theodore Harrop, Goward's deputy. "That plan is well accepted and beginning to change the shape of the fleet as we speak," he said.

The larger, 44-foot-long motor lifeboats-which can right themselves after flipping over in heavy surf-have all been replaced by 117 fast (26-knot) 47-foot-long motor lifeboats that can maneuver in 30-foot seas. These boats were designed by the Coast Guard and produced by Textron Marine & Land Systems in New Orleans, La.

A contract for up to 700 25-foot-long Response Boats-Small (RB-Ss)-designated the Defender class-was awarded recently, and production is to begin shortly. Over the next seven years, this new standard boat, built by Safe Boats International in Port Orchard, Wash., will replace the aging fleet of hundreds of nonstandard boats.

In addition, approximately 150 larger, 41-foot-long medium-performance boats, which are 30 years old, will be replaced by a Response Boat-Medium beginning in approximately one year. The three competing vendors are: Ocean Technical Services Inc. (Otech) of Harvey, La., Manitowoc Marine Group of Marinette, Wis.-partnered with Kvichak Marine Industries Inc.-and Textron Marine & Land Systems of New Orleans, La. "Medium performance" signifies a highly capable vessel in terms of speed and carrying capacity but lacking heavy surf capability.

A very small number of nonstandard, special-purpose craft will remain in the Coast Guard's inventory.

With the standardization of the boat fleet now well underway, Goward and others in the Coast Guard believe that the service's fleet of response boats and the crews who operate them will be even better prepared to fulfill the multiple missions of defending the homeland, search and rescue, law enforcement, illegal migrant interdiction, and safety and environmental protection.

Gunnery Sgt. David Vergun (USMC Ret.) is the associate editor of The Military Engineer magazine.