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Fun in FMB

(The Cadet Experience, Class of 2014) Permanent link All Posts

So, my fourth class year at the Coast Guard Academy has come to an end. I am now a third class cadet. What a great feeling! I’m sure several of my classmates will go into more detail about why it’s so great, so I’ll move on and let you read it from them.

For the past four weeks, I have been assigned to the Coast Guard Cutter Marlin in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. It has been a really unique and exciting experience.

The Marlin only has a crew of twelve, so I was right alongside them, taking part in everything. I served as Communications Officer during a commercial fishing vessel boarding, using radios and cell phones to liaise between the Boarding Officer, the Captain, Sector Saint Petersburg, and the El Paso Intelligence Center. I piloted the ship on a return cruise from Tampa Bay and served as the plugman during damage control drills.

They weren’t all glorious duties though. I spent hours sanding, priming, and painting and even more scrubbing the sides to keep them white. And, in what many of the crew consider my most important contribution, I spent three hours on the phone with DirecTV to get our satellite fixed so we could watch TV again.

I’ve never been seasick before, but as the crew warned me, the 87’ coastal patrol boat is the worst-riding ship in the Coast Guard. After several hours of pitching up and down with waves breaking over the bridge, I could no longer say I’d never been seasick.

We carried out our law enforcement mission excellently, finding illegal crabbers and shrimpers with narcotics on board. It was quite an experience for my first visit to the operational Coast Guard.

Pretty soon, I’ll be heading to Eagle to sail across the Atlantic. Then, I’ll be returning to the Academy for my third class year. As I thought yesterday while lying on the beach sipping a non-alcoholic piña colada, life is good.

Go Bears!

More about Nick.

Posted by Leann Strickland at 2/16/2012 10:23 AM