17th District Office of Public Affairs
U.S. Coast Guard

Date: July 19, 2005 
Contact: Petty Officer Sara Francis 
(907) 271-2660 

After 4 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, (907) 463-2000 

Feature Story

Rock ahoy! Coast Guard replaces critical day beacon

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - “12 feet, 10 feet!” A watch stander on the focsule of the ship called back to the bridge. “Eight feet!” Was the next cry. The 225-foot black hulled ship loomed closer to the massive rock that lay ahead. 20-knot winds and rain slapped the crew on the weather decks and the four-man team on the rock. “Three feet!” The 2,000 ton ship came to a halt.

Executive officer, Lt. Shawn Decker, was piloting the sea going buoy tender. The Kodiak based cutter is equipped with a single controllable pitch propeller, bow and stern thrusters which give the cutter the maneuverability it needs to tend buoys offshore and in restricted waters. This was a particularly tricky bit of navigation. Prior to approaching the rock the crew deployed a small boat and made exact soundings of the area near the rock with the small boat's fathometer. On approach to the rock the cutter crew had deployed the anchor. By catching and dredging they used the anchor as a tether to keep the vessel from surging forward to wreck the ship on the rock that had damaged many other vessels – like the Waters.

A pager went off in the dark. Lt. Danielle Wiley, supervisor at the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment in Kodiak, Alaska, looked at the clock. The red 3 a.m. beamed. There had been yet another grounding.

Wiley met the trooper vessel Cama’i at St. Herman’s Harbor in Kodiak. They departed at 9:35 a.m. An hour later, Wiley was in the Ouzinkie Narrows. It was raining hard and there was dense fog. The GPS indicated the grounded boat’s position was nearby.

All at once the fog shifted like a curtain had been pulled back. In front of the crew rested the 70-foot wooden boat Waters. Its bright blue hull loomed on the rock pinnacle. It was almost perfectly upright, as if Neptune himself had set it there.

Wiley and the troopers circled the scene carefully. The Number 4 day beacon was broken off the mounting. It lay on the rock. Blue hull paint was visible on its red surface.

Waters had been en route to Kodiak from the Katmai Coast for supplies. The tide was high at the time, nine and a half feet. The skipper stated later that he had slacked the boat’s speed in the narrows because of the weather, and that his reduced maneuverability combined with the tidal current to drag the boat sideways onto the rock. There had been a strong eddy that surprised him. The day beacon wasn’t visible until the Waters was almost upon it. He added that he had towed other vessels off the same rock the Waters went aground on.

The crew had smartly plugged the fuel vents before departing for the nearby Ouzinkie village in a skiff. They arranged for salvage with a local operator, but they had no luck the following morning in a high tide just over nine feet. The fishing vessel Alpine Cove tried to tow the Waters off the rock, but the current prevented steering and put too much strain on the tow­line. Finally—several days after the grounding—the tug Kodiak King got the Waters off the rock in a nine-foot tide.

The damage consisted of an inch-deep penetration in the hull, caused by the day beacon’s stub. Water seeped through the damaged caulking. Divers from the nearby village made temporary repairs, and the Waters cruised to Kodiak, where the staff at Fuller’s Boatyard hauled it out and effected permanent repairs.

Almost a year later crewmembers from the Coast Guard Aids to Navigation (ATON) Team in Kodiak found themselves on the dangerous rock with the crew of the SPAR nearby assisting with the replacement of the day beacon the Waters had displaced. Using the small boat the ATON team gained access to the rock and tore up the existing concrete platform the original beacon had been fixed to. Boatswain’s Mate First Class Ben L’Allier directed his team to drill anchor bolts directly to the rock while the rain continued to pour and the wind howled. The team leveled the base plate and called to the ship for the tower.

The crew of the hulking ship, just over an arms-length away, extended the ship’s crane. The new day beacon tower dangled from the crane. Guided by the ATON team the cutter’s crew swung the crane around bringing the tower into place for installation.  After bolting the tower down and extending it to full height the addition of the red number 4 placards completed the structure.

"This tower is 6 -7 feet taller than the previous one," said L'Allier. "It not only returns a better signature to vessels’ radar, the placards are now out of the way of driftwood and debris that previously damaged them at high tides."

"This is a critical aide. The Ouzinke Narrows are just that narrow. The rock is barley visible at high tides and the opposite side of the narrow is very shallow. Even experienced captains run into trouble there," said Decker.

The combined efforts of the SPAR's crew and the ATON team made the critical repair possible in less than favorable weather. The ATON team has the experience to construct shore aids. The SPAR crew's ability to do the heavy lifting made the evolution safer than bringing the pieces of the structure out in a small boat from Kodiak. The tricky navigation was challenging but prudent, according to Decker.

Extraordinary effort equals daily operations on the last frontier.