On patrol with Chicago’s Coast Guard
Cool Article about Chicago's Coast Guard.
How are the guys there? Pretty good?
On patrol with Chicago’s Coast Guard
BY NEIL STEINBERG nsteinberg@suntimes.com July 18, 2012 5:34AM
Chicago does not have a coast.:rofl:
It can’t, in that a “coast,” according to my dictionary, is “the border of land near the sea,” and the city, despite its many glories, is not on the ocean.
Though coastless, Chicago does, however, have a coast guard, a unit of the United States Coast Guard based at Station Calumet Harbor, whose job it is to patrol the Lake Michigan shoreline, as well as the Chicago River plus some 120 miles of connected rivers and waterways.
A big job and, this being summer, with a job to do myself, I thought somebody ought to join the Coast Guard on one of its random lake patrols, to keep tabs on the situation.
The Calumet station, a large white wooden structure built in 1933 has, well, their spokesman asked me not mention the exact number of sailors based here, in case al-Qaida is reading this. So let’s just say too many to transport on a bus and too few to fill three (or, checking the official Calumet Station website, as a resourceful terrorist might, we could also state, as they do, that there are 42 active duty personnel and 32 reserves).
They’re well-armed — again, I was asked not to mention the exact weaponry but, again, it’s all plain as day online, from the M240 machine guns mounted at the bow of their Defender speedboats, which you might sometimes notice patrolling the Chicago river, to the Sig Sauer .40 caliber automatics carried as sidearms (no big secret either, as lots of military personnel carry those).
.......
The local Coast Guard has three main duties — to guard against terrorism, to conduct search and rescue of boaters in distress, and to encourage marine safety. Six sailors and I pile onto a 45 foot patrol boat — which the Coast Guard refers to, none-too-lyrically, as an “RBM,” or “Response Boat-Medium.” The boat is two years old, with a jet drive, which means it isn’t pushed forward by anything as retro as propellers, but by twin 825 horsepower Detroit Diesel engines powering what amounts to a pair of jet engines — two Rolls Royce Waterjets that suck water out of the bottom and rocket it out the back. With a top speed of . . . well, I’m not supposed to say that either, though the website says 40 knots. The thing can really clip along.
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On patrol with Chicago
