Free Republic

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida -- More than 26 tons of cocaine worth at least $715 million was brought ashore Thursday in Florida following multiple recent seizures by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy in the eastern Pacific. Coast Guard officers said at a news conference Thursday that the drugs brought to Fort Lauderdale came from 27 separate vessel interdictions and five bale recovery operations off Central and South America over the past three months.

The Coast Guard Sunday morning (Dec. 11) continued its search for a 35-year-old motorcyclist who catapulted off the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway's northbound bridge late Saturday. The motorcycle rammed into the back of an SUV around 11 p.m., leaving debris spread over a half-mile stretch, Causeway General Manager Carlton Dufrechou said. The northbound lanes remained closed for several hours before reopening around 3:30 a.m. Sunday, Dufrechou said. The operator of the motorcycle has not yet been identified. Dufrechou said the motorcyclist was traveling at a high rate of speed when the accident occurred about eight miles from the south shore. A...

The U.S. Coast Guard says it’s searching for nearly two dozen Cuban migrants who were on board a makeshift vessel that capsized off the Florida Keys. […] Coast Guard spokesman Eric Woodall says three migrants were found Monday on a smaller island near Big Pine Key. The men said they left Cuba last Tuesday with 23 people aboard the vessel, which capsized Wednesday evening. …

Hundreds of passengers on board a packed ferry are being forced to abandon ship after a blaze broke out on board. US Coastguards raced to the scene after receiving reports that a huge fire caught hold of a massive ship carrying more than 500 people. A number of people are feared to be in the water - according to the Coastguard - but it is not yet known if any are injured. Lifeboats According to reports, the vessel is a passenger ferry that caught fire just a mile outside San Juan bay in Puerto Rico. The US Coastguard revealed it...

“In a world that tells you to hate what you look like, being on stage is an expression of self-love.” – Kenyetta When you’re married for eight and half years to a member of the Coast Guard, a divorce signifies the end of the marriage and your home on a military base. With nowhere to go, Kenyetta joined the Coast Guard. With her sister on deck to care for her son in New York, she attended boot camp and upon graduation, she and her son returned to the base they’d called home. Kenyetta’s first military station assignment was at the...

A division of the Department of Veterans Affairs tasked with fixing up the VA's broken veteran suicide hotline has dropped roughly 1.4 million phone calls from veterans since fiscal year 2015, a VA whistleblower told the Washington Examiner. That high number of abandoned calls is raising questions about whether the VA is doing all it can to fix up the suicide hotline, which has been criticized as the latest part of the VA that is failing veterans. Scott Davis, a whistleblower and program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, noted that the VA's Health Resource Center is...

U.S. Marine Corps 22 mins *The Marine Corps can confirm there is an active search and rescue operation ongoing for two CH-53 helicopters of the coast of Oahu. The U.S. Coast Guard is currently conducting search and rescue operations. The aircraft are from the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing from Marine Corps Base Hawaii. We will provide more details as they become available.* — Major Christian Devine, USMC

China has finished construction on a second 10,000-ton China Coast Guard (CCG) cutter destined for patrols in the South China Sea, Chinese state media reports. The ship, designated CCG 3901, “has been completed recently and is ready to start protecting China’s maritime rights,” The Global Times announced. A sister ship, the CCG2901, already deployed to the East China Sea in 2015. The CCG 3901, constructed at Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard, has been dubbed the ‘monster’ by the media due to its unusual large size for a coast guard vessel. According to some sources, the vessel could have a displacement 12,000 to...

The Arctic geopolitical situation is changing rapidly. The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe, with the region losing roughly 13 percent of its ice per decade. Melting ice has raised the possibility of access to new transshipment routes, fishing grounds, mineral deposits, vast petroleum reserves, and tourism opportunities. Use of the Northwest Passage across Canada or the Northern Sea Route across Russia could shorten transcontinental shipment distances by at least a third and open new venues for destination tourism. A truly transpolar route may be possible by 2030, which would shorten shipping times even more. On...

Solo sailor Emmanuel Wattecamps has set up a fundraising page to try and buy a new boat after his yacht sank following a dramatic rescue. The 28-year-old Frenchman who is originally from Brittany, France was rescued from his stricken boat La Chimere on Tuesday, 20 October, approximately 400 miles south of Cold Bay, Alaska. His leap to safety from his 30ft yacht to the Swedish ice breaking ship Tor Viking in heavy seas, was filmed by a C-130 Hercules Coast Guard plane monitoring the rescue. Emmanuel said: ‘My beloved new pet (and new best friend) Pipalup the cat and I...

The Coast Guard will hold a joint press briefing with the National Transportation Safety Board to provide updated information on the search for the crew of El Faro and the investigation Wednesday afternoon.

The owners of a cargo ship that disappeared Thursday with 33 people on board as Hurricane Joaquin raged said the ship's captain had planned to skirt the storm, but was prevented from doing so by a mechanical failure that left the boat adrift in the path of the power storm. Phil Greene, president and CEO of ship owner Tote Services Inc., told the Associated Press the captain of the El Faro, whose name has not been released, had conferred with her sister ship — which was returning to Jacksonville, Fla. along a similar route — and determined the weather was...

Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor responds to questions during a press conference for search-and-rescue operations for a missing container ship, El Faro, at Coast Guard Air Station Miami, Oct. 5, 2015. Thirty-three people were aboard the El Faro before it went missing in the Caribbean Sea. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Mark Barney.

President Obama’s urgent call to construct a new fleet of heavy Coast Guard icebreakers to monitor the contested Arctic is belied by his recent budgets that slashed funding for even one new ship. Mr. Obama, in a game of polar ice chess with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his 40-plus icebreakers, made the gap one of his themes as he toured Alaska last week. Officials say the U.S. needs to keep pace in the face of an increasingly serious challenge by Russia, which is making new territorial claims on the Arctic. But even by the White House’s own internal projections,...

Published on Aug 23, 2013 Freely downloadable at the Internet Archive, where I first uploaded it. "On overseas activities of the Coast Guard in World War II. Includes views of the amphibious invasions of Guadalcanal, North Africa, Anzio, Tarawa, Saipan, Luzon, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Normandy, and South France. Cutters shoot down an airplane, patrol a Persian port, deliver supplies and men to Greenland, release depth charges, and sink a German boat. Coast Guardsmen place buoys in a port, load supplies on B-24 plane, load wounded Marines aboard transports off Tarawa, and rescue sailors of ships sunk by Japanese suicide planes...

The Eagle was built by the Nazis and fought for Hitler in World War Two - so how did a tall ship that once flew the swastika end up as a training vessel for new US Coast Guard cadets? Driving home along the coast of Connecticut one winter's evening, Tido Holtkamp saw a ghost. There she was - moored in the harbour, her three towering masts, draped with those familiar sails he had rigged back in the German Navy in World War Two. Her body had been repainted in the red, white and blue of the US, but her curves...

‘A Liking for the Sea’ | JFK and the USCG Eagle Jul 21st, 2015 | Categories: Americana, Jared Paul Stern | by Jared Paul Stern A majestic sight greeted visitors to Portland, Maine’s waterfront the other day: the only active commissioned sailing vessel in American military service. The 295-ft. USCG Eagle, used as a training cutter for future officers of the United States Coast Guard, visited the city as part of the Tall Ships Portland Festival. The ship has a rather interesting history. Built as the German training vessel Horst Wessel in 1936, Adolf Hitler presided at its launch and...

Disney has just release its first trailer from its new film The Finest Hours, based on the remarkable true story of “the greatest small boat rescue in U.S. Coast Guard history.” The film tells the story of the SS Pendleton, a 10,448 gross ton “T2″ tanker which broke in half during a fierce nor’easter while off the coast of Cape Cod on February 18, 1952.

NEW LONDON, Conn. (Reuters) - Rising seas and thawing permafrost caused by warmer global temperatures threaten U.S. military bases and will change the way the U.S. armed services defend the country, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday. In a commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy, Obama underscored the risks to national security posed by climate change, one of his top priorities for action in his remaining 19 months in office. "The threat of a changing climate cuts to the very core of your service," Obama told the 224 graduating cadets, who studied the impacts of global warming...

MOBILE, AL (WALA) - One boater was rescued, but four were still missing as the United States Coast Guard searched the waters of Mobile Bay after sailing vessels participating in a Dauphin Island sailing regatta capsized during a storm. The Coast Guard Sector Mobile received the report at approximately 4:30 p.m. Saturday that the regatta was struck by severe weather causing multiple vessels to capsize and leaving multiple people on the water. The United States Coast Guard said 200 people were on 119 boats during the 57th annual iteration of the Dauphin Island Race.