Day Trip to Mayport Naval Base

 

Bunch of guys from Coquina headed up the road today to tour the Coast Guard Station and then the Naval Base at Mayport Florida.  This is a pretty significant Naval Base, lots of ship repairs going on.  They are also talking about spending many millions of dollars to dredge the harbor you see in the photo above to accomodate at least one of the new Reagan Class Nuclear aircraft carriers. There are currently all being ported at Norfolk Va, and the SecDef thinks this is not a good idea-  virginia of course doesn't agree, as they stand to loose the 4000 sailors and about hundreds of millions of dollars in attached revenue,  but looks like they will have to get over it.

We had a great tour with some very nice folks at the Coast Guard Station.  We had their mission explained, toured the docks and viewed their "assets" as they called them, we call them ships.... and got to go for a 20 minute ride on a 25 foot pursuit boat. 

 We rode in the front boat, with the red gunwales.  They ran us up the channel, and demonstrated a few of its capabilities, including that it would run about 40 knots... which was fun because the river was very choppy and it was very windy today.... took a nice river bath.  It also stops on a dime, we discovered, and loves to run circles. 

 This is another of their "assets", a 47 foot rescue boat, what was in dry dock being attended to.  There was a crew of five or so sanding her bottom.  They said they were expecting to "retire" this craft in the next little bit and get a newer 47 foot model.

 We had a short demonstration of the weaponry available to the Coasties as they engage in boarding ships in open waters, machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and the old line M-16. 

This is the Jacksonville fire and rescue boat that cruised on by while we were there-  They do a lot of joint exercises with the Coast Guard. 

We ate lunch at the station mess hall, it was pretty good-..  I was very much impressed with the Coast Guardsmen and women. They certainly knew what their mission was, and were very pleasant. 

Fact of the day-  Did you know the US Coast Guard is smaller than the New York City Police Department?  They work hard, believe me.