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The Coast Guard patrols the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti—a chokepoint for drug traffic, a thoroughfare for fleeing Haitians, and an unforgiving sea for vessels in distress. Its cutters, like the Alert (WMEC-630), and aircraft, like the Alert’s embarked Dolphin helicopter, are the
” in this tropical sea.
Multi-mission responsibilities in the passage often tug the cutters—and their crews—in different directions. Although everything stops for search and rescue, there’s always another boarding to identify potential Haitian refugee boats or drug smugglers looming on the horizon.
Clockwise: crewmen lower the Alert’s motor surf boat (Alert 2) for drill; the cutter’s embarked HH-65 overflies a 35-foot sailboat, packed with about 50 fleeing Haitians, off Haiti; the gun crew practices firing the three-inch gun; the mast posts a record of “wins” in the drug war; the last leg of a SAR case—the Alert’s rigid-hull inflatable (Alert 1) takes over the tow of a 40-foot sailboat, which had lost its rudder and generator, into a safe harbor in the Bahamas; Alert makes a rendezvous with her sister ship, the Diligence (WMEC-616) northwest of Great Inagua Island.