Personal Essay

In October of 1997, I enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. Fresh out of High School and barely old enough to vote I decided that I needed to do something other than go to college, I just wasn’t ready. I had shuffled back and forth between several different branches of the Military when I finally decided on the Coast Guard. The peacetime missions that the Coast Guard conducted had lured me in. For me, the biggest draw of all was Search and Rescue.

In December of 1997, I had completed my basic training in Cape May, New Jersey and had been assigned to my first unit. I had been issued orders to a heavy weather search and rescue unit in Menemsha, Massachusetts.

I remember the first time my crew was dispatched on a true heavy weather mission. We had been training relentlessly for this moment, and running down to the boat, I was confident I was ready.

We cast off our lines and headed out to rescue a disabled commercial fishing boat been caught in a storm that turned a calm ocean into a churning monster. We approached the mouth of the jetty to leave the harbor into Menemsha Sound, a trip that was typically effortless. When we reached sound, we were immediately tossed into an ocean of fifteen-foot breaking waves, a precursor of the trip to come.

The transit across the sound had never made me nervous before. The trip was a daily routine, the same one we would make for our training missions. Today was much different. The waves became progressively larger and before I realized, we were in the middle of a steady set of thirty-foot waves. It was wet and cold. The salt water tossed the forty-four foot boat like a cork, lifting it up and burying the entire bow into the face of the next wave. It was the first time I had seen blue water crash over the top of the captain’s chair. We were pushing the limitations of the boat. I peered over to our coxswain; he was a salty older man, experienced, a twenty-five years veteran. He was restless and appeared uneasy. I knew we were in for a long trip.

We limped to the area we had been dispatched, battered and beaten by the waves. . A rescue helicopter had been dispatched from nearby Otis Air Force Base to assist us with our rescue mission. When we arrive on the scene of the mission, we were notified that the rescue helicopter was returning to base because the weather was too rough. We were the only unit that was capable of helping the vessel in duress.

The disabled boat was at the mercy of the ocean, the fishing gear whipping around the deck and banging off the sides of the pilothouse. The passengers on board were clinging to the stanchions of the rail and screaming for help. The boat was getting dangerously close to the rocks. It was time for us to act.

The coxswain shouted orders to the crew and we acted just as we had during our training, it was instinctual. All of the pieces were coming together. We maneuvered closer to the vessel, our hull smashing against the boat with every violent jerk of the waves. One by one, we plucked the fishermen off the boat. Each approach, a new challenge, time was running out. With all of the fisherman safely secured in the rescue boat’s survival compartment, our mission was complete. The fisherman watched powerlessly as their boat pounded against the rocks, abandoned. We turned into the face of the waves and headed back across the sound to the pier.

When we tied up to the pier the fishermen disembarked the boat as we stowed or rescue equipment reading for the next mission. I watched as one of the fishermen knelt down and kissed the pier with tears in his eyes. Reality finally set in. We had rescued six men, six experienced fishermen.

I will never forget the feeling of accomplishment that came with that and every other successful mission. The dump of adrenaline that came with every heavy weather mission. I was once asked, “What is it like?” “What’s it fell like to be out in that?” My response was; it’s like standing up on a rollercoaster, going through a carwash in the middle of the winter.