Underway - Alaska Traveler - page 192

search and rescues, or SARs. Then there are the marine safety inspections of all types of
vessels, checking to see if they are carrying a survival suit for every crew member, if their
EPIRB (emergency locator beacon) is in proper working order, their life rafts, ditto, among
many other things. There is also marine environmental protection, and the USCG 's mission
includes all navigable waters in the U.S., which is why you'll find them in places like
Iowa as well as Alaska.
They also enforce our border, which includes the Maritime Boundary Line. The MBL is
the boundary between U.S. and Russian territorial waters. This matters because the MBL
straddles some of the richest fishing grounds in the world, and we want to make sure our
guys get to catch their slice of that pie. The Coast Guard also does boardings of domestic
vessels to assess the catch, to see if a fishing vessel is catching the right kind of fish in the
right area at the right time of year.
They fish the MBL year round. That means that the Coast Guard patrols it year round, in
spite of what they call boxcar lows (“One low right after another,” says Captain Lloyd)
that howl north out of the Aleutians. While I was on board, I never saw a NOAA forecast
that called for less than gale force winds. I saw a couple that were labeled hurricanes. “Up
here,” says Captain Lloyd, “they're just storms.”
Life on board is no walk in the park. Many of the crew are fresh out of boot camp and
have never been on a boat before in their lives. The ship rocks and rolls and corkscrews
and just walking is a challenge. I was on board two weeks and I was still doing the tango
with the ship when I got off. It's hard getting through a meal without something on the
table ending up in your lap, and sleeping is problematical at best between the motion and
the noise of the engine, the activities of the night watch and the creak and groan of the
ship itself.
Command is acutely aware of this, and if there have been a lot of operations in a short
space of time will declare holiday routine for a half day. If they can. A SAR call comes in
and they suit up and go back to work. The Alex Haley is on call 24-7, from the captain to
the newest mess cook.