A Day in the Life at Coast Guard Station-Two Rivers, Wis.
September 02, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Benjamin Wideman | Source: Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter
“Man overboard! Man overboard!”
…Four days before the training exercise, Boyer and Petty Officer 2nd Class Linden Hannon, 27, found themselves treading water two miles offshore after rescuing two men whose boat sank. One of the Coast Guard’s dewatering pumps went down with it.
Five days after the training exercise, Boyer was back on Lake Michigan with three other crewmen, this time rescuing four Two Rivers residents — two adults and two children — from the water after their fishing boat filled with water an hour earlier.
“We live and work in the community, so the people we see in town or we live near, those are the same people we rescue and help. It’s a rewarding job.”
…On this day, [Chief Petty Officer John Davis] presents one of the youngest crewmembers, Fireman Trina Beiring, 19, of Calumet, Mich., with a boat engineer certificate.
Quarters lasts about 20 minutes.
Biering and a handful of others head home on their day off, while Davis and most of the crew return to the station.
…Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Belval has been monitoring distress frequencies and incoming calls in the communications room since 6:50 a.m.
Personnel in Milwaukee handle the overnight duties remotely, immediately notifying Two Rivers crews if an emergency arises. The SAR crew works 48 hours on, 48 hours off, with sliding weekend shifts. The ATON crew typically works Mondays through Fridays.
“It’s like a dispatch in here,” says Belval 28, of Virginia Beach, Va., noting mariners frequently call seeking weather updates.
The communications room has nautical maps, weather instruments, a phone, radios set to distress frequency channel 16, a secured-access computer for confidential Coast Guard transmissions, and four security cameras scanning the fenced-in property.
“As long as we stay calm in here, they stay calm out there,” Belval says about handling distress calls. “The moment we sound like we don’t know what we’re doing, that will cause them to panic. We need to stay calm at all times.”
…On this day, the distress call Belval receives around 9:30 a.m. isn’t as urgent — it’s a training exercise about a boat taking on water — but he handles it like any other, quickly gathering information and filling out paperwork to relay to the responding boat crew.
“With calls like this, we’ll launch either the 41-foot utility boat or the 25-foot response boat,” Yeager says. “Once we’re on scene, we assess the situation. We have dewatering pumps we can put aboard the vessel, and then we’ll hook them up in a tow and bring them back to a safe harbor.”
Six reservists, including Dahl and Brickson, are in town for their yearly two-week training program. It’s ideal for learning protocol and terminology, not to mention hands-on applications like determining bearings, tying knots and throwing lines to stranded vessels.
…Meanwhile, the ATON crew continues working two miles northeast at Point Beach State Forest. It’s replacing a lighting mechanism atop the 113-foot-high Rawley Point lighthouse.
The old equipment atop the 114-year-old structure broke five days earlier.
The job involves carrying heavy equipment up a tight, winding staircase, fastening it down after drilling new holes in the confined space, and then bringing the old materials safely down.
“We’re here to do a service for the mariner,” says Petty Officer 1st Class James Farris, 41, a native of Shawnee, Okla., who serves as ATON supervisor. “Everything they utilize for navigation is on us.”
The ATON unit’s aids to navigation (including 18 lighthouses) all are meticulously tracked using charts on the second floor at Coast Guard Station Two Rivers. One of the most dangerous tasks is fixing range boards more than 100 feet high; it requires special tower-climbing training.
