Browsing: Coast Guard

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Coast Guard Helicopter Crashes in Alaska

A Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter crashed Monday night while on a rescue mission in Southeast Alaska. The four crew on board were rescued by a second Coast Guard helicopter. Two had serious injuries, and all four were flown to a hospital in Seattle for treatment. The incident started when the crew of the Lydia Maria, a commercial crabbing boat, reported flooding; it was in Farragut Bay, near Petersburg. A Coast Guard helicopter from Sitka responded. At 11:05 p.m. the Lydia Maria reported that the Coast Guard helicopter had crashed on Read Island in the bay. Rescue crews from Alaska Wildlife…

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NTSB Urges Coast Guard To Act on Safety

The National Transportation Safety Board is urging the Coast Guard to adopt safety management regulations for small passenger vessels, one of the recommendations that the NTSB made as a result of the fire on the commercial dive boat Conception that killed 34 people off Southern California in September, 2019. Safety management systems (SMS) regulations now are now looser for smaller passenger vessels than they are for cargo ships and workboats. But the NTSB has asked the Coast Guard to tighten them since 2005. Congress approved a tightening in 2010. For its part, the Coast Guard says it has made some…

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New Radar Helps with Search and Rescue

The Coast Guard just announced that it’s buying a new radar system that will improve their search-and-rescue efforts significantly. The new next-generation weather radar system, the Honeywell IntuVue RDR-7000, uses automated technology; it will be used to upgrade the radar now on Coast Guard Jayhawk and Dolphin helicopters, replacing the current manual systems with fully automated tilt-and-gain controls. With the current system, a pilot has to manually adjust the controls to direct the radar beam. The new automated system, which captures weather as far as 80 nm away, will be particularly valuable to Coast Guard crews on search-and-rescue missions that…

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Illegal Charter Skipper Fined $98,364

In case you’ve ever thought about making some money on the side by chartering out your boat, here’s a cautionary tale from the Coast Guard. It helps to follow the rules: NEW ORLEANS — The Coast Guard imposed a civil penalty, Feb. 6, 2023, to a mariner found operating a charter vessel in violation of federal laws near Destin, Florida. Coast Guard Station Destin boarding team members, Sector Mobile Marine Investigators and Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office officers conducted multiple boardings of the involved pontoon vessel over the past year after receiving tips from concerned members of the public. Following an extensive investigation led by Coast Guard Sector…

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Coast Guard Investigating Deaths in Antarctic

The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating a series of accidents involving the deaths of four Americans and injuries of five more on expedition cruise ships in the Antarctic. The accidents all occurred in the two weeks from Nov. 15 through Dec. 1 in some of the harshest marine environments in the world. The Coast Guard and NTSB have sent teams to Ushuaia, Argentina, the jumping-off point for cruise ships heading for the Antarctic. They are working with investigators from other countries where the ships are flagged. Two U.S. citizens died when a RIB from the…

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Coast Guard Rescues 7 from Disabled Tug

Coast Guard helicopters rescued all seven crew from a disabled tug boat about 30 miles off Ocean City, Maryland, early Saturday morning, after its lines snapped and got tangled in both props. About 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, a crew from the 103-foot-long tug Legacy called the Coast Guard, saying the tug was disabled and the crew was preparing to abandon ship. The Legacy had been towing a 290-foot foot barge from New Jersey to Guyana, when a 1,000-foot-long line snapped and got tangled in its starboard prop. The tug continued underway, running on one engine, until another tow line snapped…

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Fishing Boat, Container Ship, Collide. 13 Saved

It’s hard to imagine how this happened, but a 115-foot commercial fishing boat collided with a 1,000-foot container ship 63 miles southwest of Chincoteague, Virginia, last Friday and sank. The Coast Guard and two good Samaritan vessels nearby rescued all 13 people (including a child) who had been on the fishing boat. No one was injured on the containership. The Coast Guard reported that its base in Virginia got a Mayday call at 2 a.m. from the fishing trawler Tremont, from Massachusetts, reporting that they were in a collision with the Rita, a container ship flagged in Panama. The captain…

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Coast Guard Rescues 3 Men and a Dog

The Coast Guard and others recently rescued three men and a dog from a 57-foot cruising boat that was sinking off Sucia Island in the San Juans in Washington State. The Coast Guard received a call about 2 p.m.saying that a boat was taking on water after it hit some rocks entering Echo Bay on Sucia. A small, picturesque island, Sucia is just north of Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands group. It’s near the U.S.-Canadian border. The Coast Guard immediately sent a 45-foot response boat from Bellingham to help. Fortunately, Good Samaritans arrived at the scene first and…

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One Dead in Small Boat Collision with C.G. Cutter

One man was killed and his brother was injured when their 23-foot fishing boat collided with a 154-foot Coast Guard cutter about 4 nm off the north coast of Puerto Rico on Monday. The Coast Guard says that the crew of the fast-response cutter Winslow Griesser (pictured above) reported the collision about 2:20 in the afternoon, saying the cutter was in a collision with a fishing boat named Desakata. The accident was near Dorado, which is just west of San Juan. The Coast Guard station in San Juan sent a 45-foot fast boat to the scene. Meanwhile, the crew of the…

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Coast Guard: Help Wanted

The Coast Guard needs to find more recruits and then give them better housing, health care, child care and support services, according to Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan. Adm. Fagan has been the Coast Guard’s commandant since May; she is the first woman to lead a branch of the military in the United States. She testified recently before a House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation subcommittee. “My highest priority as commandant is to transform our talent management system, which has not significantly changed in 75 years, to better serve our people in the 21st century,” she said. The Coast…

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