Response Boat Medium

    Working within Vessel Operations from operating boats, and tying knots, to experiencing many sea-based jobs, one experience I can never forget was the United States Coast Guard (USCG) visit, as we experienced real-life scenarios of overboard drills to how they operated their over the complicated vessel. We boarded an RB-M boat, also known as the US Coast Guard Response boat (M for medium). The length of the RB-M was 44 feet and 9 inches, and the beam was 14 feet 7.75 inches, and the draft was 3 feet 4 inches. The top speed of this remarkable vessel is 48.9mph; the boat consists of 2 MTU Detroit Diesel turbocharged 60 series engines and two Rolls-Royce FF-series waterjets; this boat produces 825 horsepower, and can’t forget the ship also has two machine guns! Also known as the M240B, this is one scary boat you don’t want to mess with! It’s fast and dangerous; now the question is, why do the Coast Guards need these extremely intimidating vessels? Well, their job is to be the Guardians of the sea and protect the waters from any significant threats, such as Drug trafficking, Human trafficking, boat accidents, human recovery, and anything sea-based, and they’ll handle it! One of our experiences was recovering a tire we had thrown into the sea, and we envisioned it to be a human. We then screamed about how far the tire was from us and which side of the vessel it was closest to. (port/starboard) during these drills, we all got soaked. Recovering these tires made me realize that you should bring extra spare clothes during these drills and how efficient the US Coast Guards are with everything they do. Their call-outs are efficient and very straightforward, with no errors. We had to have got each tire in a matter of 30 seconds. Meanwhile, they could’ve been around 200 to 300 feet away from us. The USCG is excellent with the work they do, especially for only 3 Coastguards on each vessel; they consist of 2 Boatswain's Mates  (BM) operators (Rank E5 Tyshell Jackson & Chris), and a Machinery Tech (Rank E5 Dillon), BM’s jobs are usually doing everything from deck maintenance, small boat operations, navigation, and supervision of all boats that may be a part of any small boat station. An MK job is responsible for handling systems, including internal combustion engines, ventilation, heating, hydraulics, and basic electricity. As Vessel students, we took their independent jobs. I was an MK for the day, making sure nothing happened to the engine, another student's job was driving the boat, and the last student was watching the radar to ensure we didn’t hit anything. This was an enjoyable experience for me as it’s probably the closest thing I’m going to get to the Military, I’m looking towards the Marines Infantry, as Special Ops has been a big dream since I was 5, and getting to experience the US Coast Guards was excellent as I got to see the dedicated work they do to serve their country, and protect US waters.

Kyler Sung