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In this Discussion
- hudsontech October 2011
Note from a Hudson Family Member
-
Just got this today from the President of the HET. Kodo's go out to the many HET'ers that served in our Military....
Ahoy from the South Pacific,
We are almost 3 weeks into our trip. We completed successfully fisheries boarding's on the trip down from Honolulu. We arrived in Pago Pago, American Samoa to fuel as scheduled; however, instead of our port call and local Aids to Navigation work, we are being diverted to provide humanitarian assistance to the island chain of Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand. Tokelau is three small atolls with roughly 1500 people. The area is suffering from a severe drought and the atolls are out of drinking water.
New Zealand is running the show as far as support and logistics. We are the closest and most capable platform to provide assistance. We are embarking folks from New Zealand and supplies and setting sail to Tokelau.
Delivery of water will prove to be interesting as there are no ports or waterways in the islands chain. You can only access the atolls by small boat. Looks like we will be using our crane to load supplies to our small boat and making multiple runs to deliver bladders of water. Luckily we have our own reverse osmosis onboard. Our ship was built to be able to supply water to lighthouses. We will use the same installed system to load bladders to deliver. We have also cleaned one of our ballast tanks to carry an extra 27 thousand gallons of water to provide to the locals.
Needless to say, looks like a lot more long days ahead. We have been standing a 1-3 watch rotation with 8 hours of watch on the bridge on top of an 8 to 10 hour work day. Relief is on the horizon as folks are close to qualification; which means less watch standing and a few more hours of actually getting paper work done or a bit more sleep.
Somehow, this response has received high visibility. I drafted a situation status that is making its way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Needless to say, we are definitely a multi-mission ship. A year ago, we were skimming oil in the Gulf of Mexico and now we are supplying water to a remote South Pacific island chain, neither which is one of our primary missions. The crew is excited to be a part of a response that will directly impact the well being of others. It was exciting to see the "pep" in them when we briefed them on our tasking.
Hope to have some pictures to share. We are severely limited in bandwidth, so I will see what I can fit through the pipe.
Hope everyone is going well. Would love to hear from you.
Smiles
Andrea
LT Andrea Holt
Executive Officer
USCGC WALNUT (WLB 205)
Honolulu, HawaiiBrownie -
Just another example of the wide range of things the Coast Guard can, and does, do everyday.
I was on PLANETREE back in the '60's operating out of Honolulu. One of the jobs we had back then was reclaiming small, mostly uninhabited, islands, like Baker and Howe (made famous by Ameilia Earhart) Islands. This consisted of sending a small boat ashore with a sign bearing the name of the island and a photographer. The boat crew would hold up the sign, the photographer snapped a picture, and the United States laid claim to the island for another year.
On that cruise we wound up in American Samoa. We had a few days of fun in the sun, then went out to a small island off Samoa to renew the batteries in an unmanned light - on top of a mountain!!! The local inhabitants of the island gave us a ride into the beach in one of their outrigger canoes, thru the surf - which was a thrill and a half!!!! Then we back-packed the new batteries up the side of a mountain to the light. THAT was NOT a thrill and a half!!!!!! Was an experience tho.
At the top of the mountain we were treated by some young locals who gathered some coconuts, demonstarted how to slice the top off said nut - which gave access to the liquid inside.
One other interesting item to show the versitality of Coast Guardsmen - we stopped at Johnson Island. Among the items left behind was a huge distillation plant. Our engineering chief led the way and we soon had the thing up and running and were able to top off our fresh water tanks. We were also able to top off our fuel tanks from the thousands of gallons of diesel fuel still in tanks on the island. It is my understanding Japanese fishing boats had been tapping those big tanks for several years. Johnson was one of the tracking stations in the Pacific for the man in space program. When that ended, everybody just left the island and left everything behind.
One of our boys found a 1948 MG and got permission from the XO to bring it back to Honolulu. However, the officers found a warehouse full of nice furniture, so soon there was no room for the MG. Bunch of us took it apart the night before we sailed, and stored pieces all over the ship (PLANETREE was a 180 foot bouy tender from WWII). The XO was rather surprised to find the MG sitting on the Coast Guard dock in Hono a couple days after we got back!!
Hudsonly,
Alex Burr
Memphis, TN
