A Tender Mission for Guard

While most of the U.S. Coast Guard is preoccupied with homeland defense, Lt. Bion Stewart, the skipper of the George Cobb, has something other than Islamic terrorists on his mind--Lighted Bell Buoy No. 1 off Anaheim Bay.

The 7.5-ton navigation aid that marks the harbor entrance lands on the tender’s rolling deck with a thud. Its 26 feet of counterweight, hull and bright green tower almost span the vessel’s beam.

Within an hour and a half, eight crew members scour a thick blanket of mussels from the cylindrical hull. They check the light system and replace 90 feet of worn mooring chain before carefully lowering the huge buoy back into the sea. It’s gritty, dangerous work.

“This might seem insignificant to many people,” Stewart said. “But there is nothing else in the Coast Guard I’d rather do than work a buoy tender. We see the fruits of our labor every day, and it’s a good feeling to do something that helps.”

Stationed in the Port of Los Angeles, the Cobb is responsible for maintaining 224 navigation, weather and scientific buoys from San Diego to San Francisco. About 75 of them are moored in waters off Port Hueneme, Orange County and the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex, the third-largest port in the world.

Overall, the Coast Guard maintains about 50,000 navigation aids in the United States and U.S. territories.

They include buoys, beacons, lighthouses, radar deflecting devices and sound signals such as foghorns, whistles and bells.

The aids help mariners and boaters safely navigate the nation’s waterways, lakes, ports, coastal waters and shipping channels. They warn of hazards and expedite the movement of cargo ships in busy commercial harbors.

Keeping the devices in good repair falls on Coast Guard crews and a fleet of 68 vessels that range in size from 65-foot river tenders to 225-foot oceangoing craft that can handle the largest buoys. The tenders also can be used for search-and-rescue, law enforcement, recovery operations and responding to oil spills.

Their functional design isn’t much to look at, however.

The Cobb’s boxy superstructure, gaping buoy deck and squat black hull lack the grace of the Coast Guard’s sleek patrol boats and handsome oceangoing cutters. The 175-foot ship tops out at only 12 knots, and the tender’s flat bottom and shallow draft cause a nauseating pitch-and-roll during heavy seas.

But what the Cobb lacks in glamour it makes up for in risk. With any kind of swell, buoys weighing up to 10 tons can become massive wrecking balls if not properly hoisted and controlled.

Taut winch cables and mooring chains with links the size of footballs can snap or slide across the deck, crushing bone and lacerating flesh.

The giant concrete blocks that anchor buoys to the bottom can weigh more than 4 tons.

“There’s lots of heavy equipment, lines and chains on deck,” said Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class Gary Cavallo, who supervises buoy operations. “When it’s rocking and rolling out there, the work is dangerous and challenging. But it is satisfying.”

About 45 minutes after getting underway on a late August morning, the Cobb arrives off north Orange County to service two buoys that mark the entrance to Anaheim Bay, home to hundreds of pleasure boats and the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. Both are moored about three-quarters of a mile from the jetty.

As the tender pulls alongside Lighted Bell Buoy No. 1, a dozen seals lounging on the green hull slip into the water and regroup 20 yards away to watch for a few minutes. The sea is calm, and there is a slight breeze out of the west.

“Listen up,” Cavallo shouts to his crew of seven riggers. “Let’s be safe. Let’s not rush, but we need to be efficient. OK?”

The group includes Boatswain’s Mate 3rd Class Jerry Morfin; seamen Chris Hurley, Jaime Alvarez and Carl Barlow; and seamen apprentices Kim Booth, Cole Mason and Matt Young.

Their dark blue overalls, orange life vests and black work shoes are stained and caked with grime. There is little military formality, and most of them address each other by their first names, even their supervisors.

Cavallo makes crew members check their hard hats, chin straps, safety glasses, knives, life jackets and steel-toed boots. Before hoisting the first buoy on deck, the riggers huddle like a football squad and extend their hands into the center.

“Mud rats!” they yell.

Within minutes they pull the buoy onto the port side with boat hooks and attach a line to the top of the tower. Next, the buoy is leaned over on its side so that the crane’s block and tackle can be fastened to the hull.

By 11:10 a.m., Machinery Technician 1st Class Joe Twiddy, the crane operator, slowly lifts the 7.5-ton buoy out of the water and places it on deck, where a winch coaxes the steel structure onto a set of wooden chocks. Using a sledgehammer, a rigger then pounds a head block into place under the buoy’s hull before everything is lashed down with four lines.

As Alvarez tries to secure the exposed mooring chain to a pulley, the ship’s movement causes the big links to slide across the deck toward him. Young pulls his shipmate quickly out of harm’s way by his life jacket. No one is hurt.

The buoy is encrusted with more than 3,000 pounds of mussels, urchins and starfish that fill the air with a strong briny odor. The growth, more than a foot thick in places, is removed with scrapers and high-pressure hoses, scattering slippery organic debris throughout the work area.

By now, the buoy deck is filled with a cacophony of sledgehammers, clanking chain, pneumatic wrenches and a whining power saw used to cut open master links that connect lengths of mooring chain. Orange sparks rain across the deck.

“I love it,” said Chief Warrant Officer Dan Twomey, the Cobb’s executive officer, who has worked on buoy tenders for half of his 14-year career. “As an enlisted man, I got out of it for a while, but when the opportunity arose again, I took it.”

Twomey is on the port side of the bridge, two decks above the buoy.

He keeps the Cobb in position with the help of global positioning satellites, computers and a small joystick connected to one of the most sophisticated propulsion systems available--Z-Drive.

The Cobb, which went into service two years ago, has no rudder. Instead, it is equipped with bow thrusters and two aft propellers that can pivot. The ship can move sideways or rotate 360 degrees, ideal for buoy tending.

That kind of maneuverability was unheard of aboard the aging Conifer, a World War II-era buoy tender that the Cobb replaced.

The Conifer had a crew of 50 compared to the Cobb’s 24, and the vintage ship took much longer to perform some of the same tasks.

The Cobb’s navigation systems are so accurate it can reset a buoy within three meters of the spot where it was removed.

“It used to take one or two hours to get back on station by manual triangulation,” Twomey said. “It was a real challenge.”

On deck, the crew replaces 90 feet of the light buoy’s mooring chain with a technique they have dubbed “heat and beat.” The pin of the new master link is heated with a blow torch until red hot.

Then Young and Morfin take turns smashing the softened steel with sledgehammers. They look like a pair of railroad workers driving spikes.

After the electrical system and batteries are tested, Lighted Bell Buoy No. 1 is ready to be lowered back into the sea.

The crane operator puts tension on the line and the lashings are removed.

“Live buoy!” Cavallo yells. “Stand clear.”

The crane operator slowly lifts the navigation aid slightly off the deck and eases it over the port side into the water. All lines and tackle are removed before the Cobb backs away.

“Buoy’s clear,” Cavallo says. “Good job this time. Good job.”