U.S. Coast Guard Group, St. Pete FL

Chris, a friend of mine at work, is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Every so often they have a tour of some local place of interest. This time it was the U.S. Coast Guard Group in St. Petersburg, FL, and Chris was nice enough to ask if Gary and I would like to go along. Well, that would be a yes. So this morning at 8 A.M., Gary picked me up and we went to Chris' house to pick him up and then headed to downtown Saint Petersburg for breakfast. You can't start out on these adventures on an empty stomach. We tried The Dome Grill on Central Ave. A pretty good place. Lots of room, order at the counter like fast food, get called back to the counter when it's ready and endless coffee. We ate what some might call an adequate breakfast.

The U.S. Coast Guard Group in St. Pete is just south of Albert Whitted Airport on the east coast of Pinellas County in downtown St. Pete. To be honest, I never even knew it was there. I had (wrongly) assumed that all the Coast Guard efforts in this area came out of the huge Clearwater Coast Guard Air Station. Oops. Not exactly. U.S. Coast Guard Cutters are stationed right here in downtown St. Pete, and now that I know that, it makes total sense. This is a very busy area for nautical emergencies due to the huge amount of water traffic in the area, and the St. Pete Group is much nearer the mouth of the bay than the Clearwater Station. But sea rescues are not all of what the new USCG is all about. Drug interdiction is now a big part of it and some of the ships wear badges to show they've been there - done that.

But this was an ASME tour, and while the philosophy of the Coast Guard and all stuff that was hugely interesting, we were there to see the nuts and bolts. The whole bunch of us (about forty-five or so) were split into aledgedly managable sized groups of about fifteen. Our group had the good fortune of getting as "tour guide" an E-5 Engineering Technician named Sarah Wilson. I still am a little taken aback that women in the armed forces can be holding positions like this. Back in the day, that just didn't happen. It now seems to me like it's a very good thing. She seemed very confident and very competent, and she certainly knew her way around those cutters. As a citizen (and a vet), it makes me glad and proud that there are able, young people like her that seem to be happy and eager to be heavily involved in the defense of the country.

So what did she show us? We went on two ships. The 110 foot USCGC (U.S. Coast Guard Cutter) Knight Island & the 86 foot USCGC Hawk. They were similar, but different. The Knight Island had 2 V-16 turbocharged deisels and the Hawk had 2 V-8 twin turbocharged (German made) deisels (about 1400 HP each). The Knight Island was 12 years old and nearing (maybe a little beyond) its projected life span. The Hawk was newly commissioned in February of this year. All of the crew we encountered on these ships were obviously proud of them and what they were doing on them. Questions were eagerly answered as best as they could be. And there were plenty of them. We were after all, engineering nerds.

There are about 30 pictures to see pertaining to this tour

The tour was great. The hardware was very impressive. We even had a really good lunch (Blackened Chicken) in the Group's galley. The thing that impressed me the most? The Coast Guard G.I.'s just doing their jobs. Thank God for that.

[Apparently, it's no longer Group, now Sector. It's a military thing...]