Rescuers on the Waterfront : Coast Guard: Officers who routinely cope with everything from false alarms to actual emergencies expect more than their share of calls this holiday weekend.

The distress call was vague but urgent. “What’s the vessel’s name?” Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Olsen barked into the radio as he gunned his boat away from the dock.

“I don’t know. It’s a sailboat, about a 40-footer, halfway between the harbor entrances. White hull, white trim, sails down. Four or five people on board waving a red flag.”

The red flag--sometimes used as a distress signal--had prompted an anonymous boater to radio the Coast Guard. Within 30 seconds, Olsen and his three-man crew had cast off from the Channel Islands station.

“More’n likely a tow job,” Olsen muttered, as he piloted the 41-foot boat past the harbor breakwater and increased its speed.

A minute later, a small white sailboat came into view, along with the red flag that had caused the ruckus. Instead of a signal for help, the flag was a course marker for a boat race.

False alarms are part of the routine for the 37 men and three women based at Coast Guard Station Channel Islands, as the two-story brick building at the foot of Victoria Avenue in Oxnard is officially known.

But that routine also includes genuine rescue missions, boat fires, searches, safety checks, drug seizures, and buoy and lighthouse maintenance.

“There’s a lot of work here,” said Chief Petty Officer Marc Phillips, second in command at the station.

And rarely is it busier than Memorial Day weekend, the people who work at the station say.

“This will be my third Memorial Day here,” Machinery Technician Sam Hardiman said. “Let me tell you exactly what will happen:

“People who haven’t had their boats in the water all year will get out there and find that their battery is dead. Or their fuel line will get clogged up. We’ll have to go tow ‘em.”

Ron Buie, a petty officer 1st class who will supervise operations at the station Sunday and Monday, agreed that it will be busy. “I’ll bet you the channel will be so packed, you can skip from boat to boat,” he said.

Nearly 5,000 boats are docked at the Ventura and Channel Islands harbors. On pleasant weekend days, hundreds more come up from Los Angeles or down from Santa Barbara to explore the islands off the Ventura County coast. Many sailors, especially those used to calmer southern waters, run into trouble in the unpredictable Santa Barbara Channel.

“The weather here is really weird,” Buie said. “The water will be like glass at 10 a.m., and by 3 or 4 there’ll be a six-foot chop.”

Phillips said he was astounded by the difference in weather when he arrived at the Channel Islands station five months ago after eight years in the Long Beach area.

“The swells here are not substantially larger, but the wind pattern is odd,” he said. “You’ll have a 20-knot wind and fog at the same time. That’s really strange.”

Buie said winds out of the west are funneled between the coast and the mountainous islands and pick up strength. “People go out to the islands in the morning to fish and watch the seals,” he said. “In the afternoon, the wind picks up and people get stuck.

“L.A. people get scared. They get water in the boat, they’re novice sailors, so they call us for help. If they think they’re in trouble, we go.”

Inexperience was probably a factor in an incident the station handled Sunday, Buie said. A 34-foot sailboat three miles off the coast radioed for a tow because of engine failure.

“When a sailboat has to be towed for engine failure, it could mean the people don’t know how to sail,” Buie said.

At least eight people are on duty at the station around the clock for emergencies. In addition, six to 10 members of the Coast Guard Reserve help out on weekends. Several of the reservists are off-duty police officers, Buie said.

The 41-foot utility boat is used in most rescues, but the station also has a 44-foot self-righting boat that can weather 30-foot seas. The self-righting boats are assigned to places where seas often get heavy. Channel Islands is the southernmost station on the Pacific Coast to have one.

Last November, the 44-footer was trying to rescue a boat in distress off Santa Cruz Island in 15-foot seas and 50-knot winds. The towline got tangled with the steering mechanism, causing the Coast Guard boat to run aground. It took more than three months for repairs.

The 82-foot Point Carrew, a patrol boat, also is based at Channel Islands but works under the command of the Long Beach Coast Guard Group, usually on missions farther offshore than the 30 miles patrolled by the Channel Islands station.

When there is no emergency, some of the people assigned to Channel Islands maintain buoys, lighthouses and other navigational aids in the station’s territory--roughly the coast between Point Mugu and Point Conception. Last week, for example, a crew of four spent four days on Anacapa Island refurbishing the lighthouse.

Because of the maintenance responsibilities, Channel Islands is larger than most Coast Guard stations, some of which are housed in lighthouses and have only a few attendants.

At night, on-duty Coast Guard sailors can play pinball or watch television while waiting for an alarm to sound. They start hitting their bunks at 10 p.m.

About a third of the station’s staff is straight out of the Coast Guard’s boot camp at Cape May, N.J., Buie said. A few seamen live at the station, and about 10 others live in apartments leased by the Coast Guard at a nearby complex.

The others have to find their own housing, and in high-priced areas such as Ventura County, paying for it isn’t easy, they say.

“That’s the only drawback to living here,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Margaret Jones, an 11-year veteran who came to Channel Islands in December from Puerto Rico. Jones said she gets about $500 a month as a housing allowance. “It’s hard to find a place for under $600,” said Jones, who has an apartment in Oxnard.

Steve Summers, who lives in one of the leased apartments, has been at the Channel Islands station for about a year.

“Oxnard is nice,” Summers said while on duty in the radio room overlooking the harbor. “It’s got a small-town atmosphere, it’s near L.A., but it’s not in the heart of the big city.”

Like several people at Channel Islands, however, Summers enlisted in the Coast Guard to get job training or money for college. “I can’t wait to get into aviation school,” said Summers, who expects to start the training in about a month at the Coast Guard flight school in North Carolina. “It’s what I want.”

To get accepted, he agreed to extend his initial four-year commitment by two years.

Buie, Phillips, Olsen and Jones are making careers of the Coast Guard, even though more of their time is spent at desks than on decks.

Buie, for example, often runs the station as “officer of the day,” but his main job is personnel administration. Jones handles purchasing and procurement. Olsen gets out to sea regularly, but also is in charge of public affairs, boat operations and law enforcement. And Phillips oversees all of the station’s administrative affairs, under the commanding officer, Chief Warrant Officer Ronald S. Beglin.

But even in supporting roles on the land, they say they are happy.

“For 12 years,” Phillips said, “I’ve been doing exactly what I want to do: save lives.”