Personal protective equipment only helps if it works when you need it — and if you know how it behaves in the water. This spring, five of our Boat Crew completed the annual in-water PPE swim, entering the water in full gear to test their equipment and practice self-rescue. It is cold, humbling, and genuinely useful: the time to learn how your dry suit, PFD, and signaling gear perform is before an emergency, not during one.
Training completed by members since the Spring edition, including Kat (Mary) Scanlon becoming Basically Qualified and a Vessel Examiner.
Flotilla Aid Verifiers completed a dozen PATON assignments in north Whatcom County and reported several discrepant aids to navigation.
All eleven people aboard a Kenmore Air floatplane survived its July 23 crash in Shallow Bay at Sucia Island, with Station Bellingham and Air Station Port Angeles among the responders.
Flotilla 11 members attended the changes of command at Coast Guard Station Bellingham on May 21 and aboard USCGC Sea Lion on July 9.
Flotilla 11's Boat Crew provided a safety presence for the Ski to Sea race and Bellingham's FIFA World Cup fan zone, and drilled man-overboard recovery.
The flotilla said farewell to Steve Bell (24 years) and Hoyt Hatfield (25 years) with a BBQ on July 16 celebrating their service.
A proposal that boat crews borrow aviation's practice of personal minimums, writing an objective abort checklist in advance to back up GAR and the coxswain's judgment.
The Coast Guard has moved its six-cutter expeditionary squadron from Bahrain to Singapore and Subic Bay, taking on a larger presence and partner-building role in the Western Pacific.
Adm. Kevin E. Lunday sworn in as 28th Commandant, the Force Design 2028 modernization push, and an Air Station Cold Bay rescue of nine crab boat crew in the Bering Sea.
The national ensign flying from a Flotilla 11 patrol boat on Bellingham Bay.