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Safe harbor sailors
By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer Ever since he was a kid rowing across lakes in Michigan, Terry Affeld has loved the water. It's why he spent four years in the Navy. It's why he used to buy tickets to board fishing boats, even though he never planned to fish. It's why he rode so often on the Starlite Princess paddle wheeler that the captain offered him a job. But even though seawater makes his eyes sparkle, a powerboat won't fit into his budget. So Affeld, 65, a retired Largo firefighter, has found another way to cruise the waters of Tampa Bay. He's an active member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a group of sea-loving volunteers who help keep the waterways safe. "Where else can you get to go out in a cabin cruiser like this?" Affeld said one recent morning, as he rode past Tampa's Harbour Island aboard the Tiki III, a 27-footer owned by fellow Auxiliary member Lothar Amenda. The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is an unpaid force of men and women who buy their own uniforms and take on the tasks of inspecting boats, teaching safety classes and patrolling the water in search of environmental or safety problems. An unheralded job most times, it lately has taken on new significance. Since Sept. 11, these genial volunteers who check boats for life jackets and functioning flares have been on the lookout for terrorists, too. If terrorists ever target one of the cruise ships or hazardous cargo tankers chugging into Tampa Bay -- a possibility that has recently prompted local and federal officials to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase security in this area alone -- Auxiliary members on their regular patrols will be among the best-placed people to spot an attack. Says Affeld: "I feel like I'm doing something for my country." The Auxiliary dates to 1939. During World War II as many as 50,000 volunteers pitched in to help the active-duty Coast Guard. In peacetime, it became an important force for promoting boating safety, especially in busy waterways such as Florida's.
"The Coast Guard traditionally has been given a heavy burden of duties," said William Schwob, a retired Coast Guard rear admiral who is active in the Auxiliary in Clearwater. "In my opinion, they wouldn't be able to meet their burden of duties without the assistance of the Auxiliary." The Auxiliary is separate from the Coast Guard Reserves, who are paid Coast Guard officers on reserve status. Members of the Auxiliary: Teach a popular safe boating course that often enables boat owners to receive discounts on insurance. Perform voluntary "vessel safety checks," to make sure boats have proper safety features. Go on regular patrols looking for oil spills or other environmental hazards. Go on regular safety patrols, especially looking for boaters whose motors might have conked out during a day of fishing. Auxiliary members often mount extra cleats or special posts to their craft, so they can tow disabled boats. They don't write tickets or handle law enforcement matters. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Coast Guard has increased its emphasis on security at ports across the country. In tandem, the Auxiliary has ordered a nationwide audit that will assess each Auxiliary member as well as the overall system. The attacks created a need for "a very much higher level of operational tempo," Viggo Bertelsen Jr., national commodore for the Auxiliary, said by telephone from the Seattle area. "Where typically patrols scheduled for the Auxiliary would be weekends . . . in many parts of the country we were seeing requests for 24-hour, seven-day-a-week harbor patrols because who knew what was coming." Tampa Bay is frequently host to large cruise ships and tankers loaded with ammonia, petroleum and other hazardous cargo, so many in law enforcement say terrorism in Tampa Bay is a possibility they have to prepare for. Paul Mayer of St. Petersburg, an active member of the Auxiliary, said he has attended training in which instructors discussed how to recognize suspicious activity on large ships. Members even learned something about Middle Eastern history, to place the September terrorist attacks in a historical context. "We're doing a lot more patrols now," said Mayer, a past division captain of the Auxiliary who now serves as nationwide communications chief for the vessel safety check program.
"We're helping out the Coast Guard, helping out the country," said Karen Miller, who took the boating safety class on a lark in 1993 and became so enthusiastic she has bought a boat and gotten elected as a flotilla commander for Clearwater's Auxiliary. "I get all the altruism plus the fun." The increased patrols have added to the volunteers' sense of mission, Mayer said. "We feel we're actually doing something." That's how Amenda and Affeld felt one day last week as they took the Tiki III past Harbour Island and cruised the channels along Tampa's waterfront, past the aquarium and the new Channelside shopping center, past some huge freighters, the You Yue of Hong Kong and the Fu Ning Hai. The water was calm, the air was cool, and Affeld smiled like a man who had just been told to spend the day golfing instead of working. He hasn't served in the Navy since 1959, but there are times, he said, when "I'd go back in a minute."
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