Keepers of the way home

The U.S. Coast Guard, the guardian of our nation's waterways, has a long and storied history that includes participation in every armed U.S. conflict.

By TERRY TOMALIN
Published January 6, 2006

[Photos: Beth Reynolds]

The Coast Guard’s Ryan Bailey, top left, of the St. Petersburg-based Aids to Navigation Team approaches a damaged day board marker in the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers.

	Avila, left, and Bailey fix the day board.
	Victor Avila, right, and Bailey wrestle aboard a buoy that moved more than a mile at the Caloosahatchee during Hurricane Charley in 2004.
	Crew members of the cutter Joshua Appleby load from trucks to their boat the 12,000-pound sea buoys that were used to re-establish shipping channels along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama last year.

Since 1790, when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton established what would become the Revenue Cutter Service and later the Coast Guard, to 2005 when Guard crews from across the United States worked around the clock to rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina, dedicated "coasties" have helped keep America safe.

Part of the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard is officially tasked with the following duties: search & rescue, maritime law enforcement, port security and environmental response. But the Guard has an additional responsibility, one that receives little public attention: maintaining aids to navigation.

Most boaters take for granted this system of beacons and buoys - at least until they are suddenly gone, which has happened several times in the past two years thanks to a record number of hurricanes.

Aids to navigation are particularly vulnerable to storms. Beacons (structures permanently fixed to the sea floor or ground) include lights and daymarks. Buoys (floating aids anchored to the seabed by a chain and concrete weight) vary in shape and color.

The Coast Guard's St. Petersburg-based Aids to Navigation Team is the largest in the country in respect to the number of navigational aids it must maintain. With 1,390 aids to navigation stretching from Horseshoe Beach in the north to Naples in the South, the St. Petersburg team services more than twice the number of aids as the next largest team. The St. Petersburg team also has a secondary responsibility for more than 3,000 private aids to navigation.

In addition to routine maintenance, the St. Petersburg team must respond to reports of damaged or missing aids to navigation within 24 hours of notification. The photographs on this page show "coasties" doing what they do best, which is being there when we need them, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Coast Guard's motto, "Semper Paratus" translates to "Always Ready." The Coast Guard's record, especially during the recent rash of hurricanes, proves that this is no idle boast.

[Last modified January 6, 2006, 01:04:19]