This article is SO true-my son is in the CG and I am so angry at the conditions that these people have to work in.
Their equipment is in disrepair. Their ships were re-tooled on the OUTSIDE by a yard in Mississippi, at HUGE expense. But now, the ships are rusting from the inside out.....(I love you Trent Lott, but.....) They are always in dry dock, needing repair and are unsafe while at sea.
Please read this excerpt form an article that was printed in the Government Executive Magazine, 2003. This recounting is true
http://www.govexec.com/features/0503/0503s3.htm
By Shane Harris
sharris@govexec.com
Underequipped. Underfunded. Overshadowed. Life on the front lines of the drug war.
f you've got anything to say, say it now!" Chris Fertig stammered while being electrocuted.
Fertig, a Coast Guard lieutenant junior grade, had been riding shotgun in a stubby, 22-foot boat with inflatable sides, plowing through rough Caribbean seas at a neck-snapping 35 knots. He and his four-man crew were chasing drug smugglers racing north from Colombia in a cigar-shaped speedboat called a "go-fast." They believed the boat was packed with cocaine. But with their target in sight, the engine on Fertig's vessel broke down, and the boat went dead in the water.
Cast adrift, Fertig had tried to radio his mother ship, the 270-foot Coast Guard cutter Bear, which was coordinating the chase from dozens of miles away. But the wires connecting his headset to the radio had come apart. So, standing ankle deep in seawater, Fertig took the broken wires in his hands and forced them together. Shock waves pulsed through his bones, and his mates heard him yelling through their head sets to speak up.