Ok, now that we've pulled out of Little Creek, VA, I have some time to type.
I'll go over a few things, but I'm keeping them to what I know, and what I've seen.
The U.S. Coast Guard has two general subdivisions, Atlantic Area (LANTAREA) and Pacific Area (PACAREA). There is also Patrol Forces Southwest Asia (PATFORSWA), but I believe that falls under the direction of LANTAREA as well as the joint command.
LANTAREA is divided into Districts. District 1 is the northeast, District 5 is mid-Atlantic to southeast, District 7 starts just north of Florida and ends near the pan handle, District 8 is huge, contains a lot of the rivers and starts at the pan handle of Florida and goes to Mexico, and finally District 9 is the Great Lakes.
I am familiar mostly with D1, D5, and D7.
D1 is mostly fisheries enforcement and search and rescue (SAR). There are huge fishing fleets in this district, a big part of which is the lobster fleet. There are also some important cities within this district, including New York and Boston. We'll look for violations in catch size or inappropriate species, illegal gear, or hazards to safety. We'll also look at the manning of the vessel. The EEZ goes out 200NM around the US. We have exclusive rights to the economic bounty from the sea in these areas. Fishing boats must be manned by atleast 75% American citizens and must have a US master of the vessel. Some do not.
D5 is the district my cutter is homeported in, and the district we just finished up a patrol in. Operations in this district mostly comprise of fisheries and search and rescue.
D7 is the hot bed of activity. The action you will generally see in this district is Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations and counter-narcotics. It is not uncommon to find Cubans, Haitians or Dominicans attempting to cross the Florida Straits to make it to the United States. With out getting into too much detail, there are two general forms of transportation you will see for migrants. A chug is a slow moving vessel. This can take the form of an old boat, a truck modified to float, barrels strapped together, or anything else that can float, safe or not. If they're coming from Cuba, the trip is about 90 miles. I drive 3 times that to see my girlfriend, so to many of us 90 miles seems like a quick and easy trip. In all actuality, it is a very dangerous trip for them. While the seas are not usually terrible in the Florida Straits, it does have a nasty current called the Gulf Stream (heats up England). Seas can be heavy, there is also heavy traffic, and chugs are usually not lit (they are sneaking over, lights aren't they're best friend). After some time afloat they are usually ready to get on "solid" footing, and eat some real food. We came across a chug one time with four men on board who swore they had seen Key West and were almost there. They had run out of water a day before and had no fuel left. They had pretty good sun burns as well. While they had been out for awhile, the land they thought was Key West was actually still Cuba, they had 70 more miles to go to find Florida. The other form of transportation is the "go-fast". Go-fasts can also be used to transport drugs. Migrants will pay for a spot on the go fast, maybe up to $10,000. The trip is fast, but again, dangerous. The driver of the boat isn't concerned about the safety or comfort of the occupants. Some people may break an arm, be cut, bruised, and a women died last year while she was slammed around in the go-fast, it was on the news. A US policy called "Wet Foot Dry Foot" is a motivator to get to US soil as fast as possible for Cubans. The law does not apply to Haitians or Dominicans.
Hopefully this helps. Some of this is mission specific, and I can't go into all the details. In my next post I'll talk about life at sea in general, and the typical underway day.
