https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQVKmqqk-TQ The national security cutter Stratton made history last month when it intercepted a South American narco-submarine packed with more than 12,000 pounds of cocaine, the service’s biggest bust to date. On Monday the crew stopped in San Diego to offload that haul — and another 28 tons of cocaine nabbed in over 23 seizures on its latest patrol — totaling a $1 billion street value, according to the service. Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft greeted the crew on the pier for the drop, part of a San Diego layover before the crew returns home to Alameda, California. Stratton’s patrol was part of…
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpMJeUAUfkE (Skip to 5:10. Wall Street Journal video via YouTube) Mixed martial arts superstar Ronda Rousey took down her opponent in 34 seconds in a fight heard ’round the world Aug. 1. The Wall Street Journal re-posted its May interview with Rousey this week in honor of her victory, and in it, she gives some insight into what might have become of her if she’d taken another path: WSJ sports columnist Jason Gay: So if, Beijing [summer 2008 Olympics], you had won gold — you would be doing what now? Rousey: I’d probably be a rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard.…
Assateague Island, Virginia, is known for its population of wild horses, which every year are rounded up and brought across the channel to Chincoteague Island, where some are auctioned off to keep the numbers under control. But in order to get there, they have to swim, so the Chincoteague Wild Pony Swim enlists the help of the Coast Guard to keep the horses safe. Several 24-foot Special Purpose Craft-Shallow Water boat crews from Station Chincoteague maintained a safety perimeter from other boats and people as they swam the channel, with thousands of spectators looking on Wednesday. The tradition dates back…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmllwTKtqU In the Coast Guard, they say, ‘You gotta go out.’ But they don’t say you gotta come back in. Fifty years ago, two oil tankers were ripped apart by an terrifying blizzard off the coast of Massachusetts, but most of the men on board survived thanks to the crew of a 36″ Coast Guard life boat. This winter Disney will release “The Finest Hours,” based on the 1952 rescue of the SS Fort Mercer and SS Pendleton by Coasties from Lifeboat Station Chatham on the south coast of Cape Cod. The movie stars Chris Pine as Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k92hcUzEBc Last winter, a Florida manatee found himself lost and alone off the coast of Texas. In February, he finally got to return home, with help from a Coast Guard HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft and some Coast Guard aviators from the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama. A sheriff’s deputy found the manatee, dubbed Trinidad, a Tampa Bay native found in the cold waters of an energy plant’s outflow near Houston, Texas back in November. He was transported to Sea World San Antonio for rehab, where researchers determined he was a known Gulf Coast manatee who’d been first observed in 2001.…
The Coast Guard turned the big 2-2-4 on Monday, celebrating with some guest appearances and other festivities all around the country. Pop quiz: Did you know that the Coast Guard is actually older than the Navy? The CG came together in 1790 as the Revenue Cutter Service, a customs enforcement agency. That same year, the United States disbanded the Continental navy, the Revolutionary War fleet, and didn’t officially form the U.S. Navy until 1798. (Although the U.S. Navy cites theirs to the founding of the Continental navy in 1775.) In 1915 the RCS merged with the United States Lifesaving Service to…
Adm. Bob Papp, who recently retired as the Coast Guard’s top officer, has made it his “pet project” to open a National Coast Guard Museum to highlight the service’s history in New London, Connecticut — near the Coast Guard Academy. Papp sat down for an exclusive interview with Navy Times at the groundbreaking ceremony there in May. Check it out: [HTML1]
From eagle attacks to life-saving boots to new uses for littoral combat ships — maybe — here’s a round up of recent Coast Guard odd news. Let’s start with a report from Alaska: Coasties were attacked by an eagle in the Dutch Harbor Post Office in Unalaska. Eagle attacks are apparently not that rare for people living up there, see here. Then there was the man charged with allegedly attacking a Coast Guard boarding officer in San Francisco. The man was also charged with allegedly making a false distress call. He claimed that a Coast Guard boarding team would be…
The Chinese coast guard is in the news for straying near islands that are part of a territorial dispute between China and Japan, but if you have never seen the Chinese ships, you might have done a double-take. The Chinese consolidated several of their maritime agencies and debuted their new coast guard Monday. If their ships look familiar, it’s probably because the Chinese have modeled their coast guard after the U.S. In a June interview, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Bob Papp told the Navy Times that the Chinese were taking cues for their coast guard from his service. “Most…
The Coast Guard is enforcing a safety zone around a drilling rig that is on fire after a natural gas well blowout Tuesday morning about 55 miles off the coast of Louisiana. A good Samaritan vessel rescued 44 people from the rig when the blowout occurred, a Coast Guard spokesman said. No injuries were reported. Gas escaping from the well at the Hercules 265 rig caught on fire Tuesday night after the initial morning incident, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported in its website. “No one was on board at the time of the ignition and no one…
