I have had so much happen to me this past week or so. I finally got to experience my first patrol. We stayed near Miami and Key West so it wasn't that big of a deal. Except we kicked ass. I got our first SAR case. We were out doing boardings and I sent my boarding team over on this one boat and they radioed back that they were knee deep in water and the boat was sinking. They were able to get the water pumped out as long as they stayed up on plane or had some speed going for them. I was able to talk our commanding officer to letting me escort them in to a safe harbor instead of waiting for the station. That boat never would have made i if they waited so it was a good thing I knew the area.
On our second go round we had an all day long affair with a sailboat. I had the watch with the CO and he wanted to board a sailboat. As we were in the middle of a boarding I spotted one and he said keep an eye on it cause it's next. It turned out to be one crazy case. The boat was registered in a foreign country, owned by a guy in France, ran as a charter out of Florida and had some shaddy as characters on it. One guy gave us 4 different names for himself, 3 people were being smuggled and one guy had a warrant out for his arrest. There is alot to this story I can't really say but the bottom line is that we had multiple countries and agencies on this guy. He eventually got arrested. Go us. It was a HUGE deal for us to be the one who found this guy.
We also stood by for security for a boat race at Juniper Inlet. That was awesome. At first I was out on the small boat standing security while the other agencies got on scene. It was kinda funny because when I got there, there was alot of people in their boats getting way to close and by the end of it, they had all moved out of the area. Haha. We sure told them haha.
We were supposed to go back out this weekend but with Sandy coming through they let us stay in port. Which was good because I was not looking forward to the beating we would have taken if we were out there. At one point it was calling for 35 foot seas. Yeah, screw that. But in a way I had my own storm I had to weather. I had my first duty as a qualified inport ood. Now that was were the "Holy hell in a hand basket.." was coming from. An hour into my watch, the stantion holding the brow had completely sheared off. So I had to untangle that and find a way to secure the brow and the lifelines so nobody fell over. I also had to suck in the stern of the cutter because that was a major factor in why the stantion broke (too much tension). All the while there was three different sets of workers on board and alarms going off constantly. Not to mention it was pouring down rain every time I had to do something.
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| The darker the color the bigger the waves. |
I called the captain about 6 times before things were all said and done. Thankfully I had my OPSbro as my jood so he helped tremendously as well as a kick ass break in jood. We went non stop from 9 to about 4. In between the chaos we had to call everyone and change our status to B2. Which means no drinking and be ready to roll out in 2 hours. Yeah I had a long list of stuff to pass to the oncoming ood. I was so exhausted that I laid down to take a nap at 4 or 5 on friday and I didn't wake up until 11 on saturday. Yup I was tired.
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