Coast Guard Cutter’s Patrols Curtailed

Patrols by the 82-foot cutter Point Divide, based in Newport Harbor since 1963, have been sharply curtailed by cuts of $100 million in the Coast Guard budget.

The Point Divide, which has spent her entire service life in the Newport Beach zone of the 11th Coast Guard District, now leaves her dock two days a month for training and maintenance instead of the former five days a month spent on patrol between San Onofre and Malibu.

“We’re pretty much held back from getting underway unless there is a serious search and rescue mission, or we get hard information that some vessel is carrying on a drug operation,” Lt. Skip Langlois, the cutter’s commander, said Tuesday. He and his crew of 12 are ready to respond under those circumstances, he said.

All other patrol work in the county’s harbors at Newport Beach, Dana Point and Sunset-Aquatic Beach near Huntington Harbour will be the responsibility of the Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol.

“Most of our work is done within the harbors,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson, “but under life-and-death situations, and depending on weather and other conditions, we can respond several miles to sea.”

He said the Harbor Patrol has a number of boats, several of them 28 feet long. “If they have enough fuel and weather isn’t a factor,” they can cover many miles of ocean in emergencies.

Lt. Debra Harbaugh, public affairs officer for the Coast Guard in Long Beach, said other vessels in Southern California affected by the reduced budget include the cutters Point Hobart at Oceanside, Point Evans at Los Alamitos Bay near Seal Beach, and the Point Stuart and Point Brower at San Diego.

She added that there “is a ray of hope that we may be saved” by the 1989 budget, effective in October, which might restore some of the cuts, especially in light of demands for stronger patrolling against drug smugglers.