[Tamaroa]

Coasties have been dealing with this crap for years. We get the Navy rejects and expect to make them last another 30 years. Our budget is pathetic. We have about 36,000 men on active duty and 8,000 reserves to cover all that coast line, never mind our other duties like breaking ice in the arctic. There was a point a few years ago where the cutters were running out of fuel and instead of patrols, they stayed at the dock until called for emergencies. Congress keeps piling more and more duties on us then doe not give us the tools we need to do the job. From the 60s through the 90's, there were literally dozens of cutters that were a half century old and still going out to sea. Right now the Storis out of Alaska is the "Queen" of the fleet. She was launched in 1942.

My old ship, the Tamaroa was 51 years old when she plowed through those now famous seas in the Perfect Storm to rescue those chopper pilots. It won't change til a disaster happens on our shores that could have been prevented had we had the right equipment and cutters.

Presently, the Navy has a 170 foot patrol boat that they don't want anymore. It is fast and heavily armed. It appears there is movement to transfer these boats to the Coast Guard for our use.
Word is that they consume large amounts of fuel and they are very rough riding. So naturally we get to play with them and there is no corresponding increase in the budget, so what will suffer?

Before we went to the DHS, we had embarked on what was called the Deepwater" project which was an effort to pretty much modernize the entire fleet. I'm not sure but that's probably going to be put on hold now, especially if we get stuck with the Navy PC's.

Bill