Admiral Allen, You Have A Problem

Is the Coast Guard knowingly shielding a a fugitive from justice? Why are senior Coast Guard officials preventing the transfer of an active duty member to civilian custody to serve a three year prison sentence? Why have senior Coast Guard officials basically stonewalled members of Congress who have asked the same questions? At 6:00 a.m. today, Coast Guard Report published a timeline of the events, including the answers to the big three questions. Who knew about it, When did they know about it, and What did they know. I urge everyone who reads Coast Guard News to read this.

Having read well over a dozen reports since July 1st, on more than one blog, I am appalled at the actions of not only the petty officer involved, but of his superiors at both the local, unit/Sector level, and Headquarters level.

I once served proudly in the Coast Guard. Now, after the numerous noose incidents, where no-one was ever caught and held accountable, with commanding officers having inappropriate relationships with their female enlisted personnel, with a high endurance cutter Commanding Officer assaulting and enlisted man, I am ashamed of what the Coast Guard leadership has become.

I am still proud of the enlisted men and women of the Coast Guard, with a few exceptions such as you’ll find in the Coast Guard Report timeline, but for the most part they are a great group of people serving a nation that takes them for granted. Unfortunately, they also seem to serve an officers corp that has forgotten the the Coast Guard’s core values of honor, respect, and devotion to duty. For that reason I say, Admiral Allen, you have a problem.

Coast Guard News Available on Twitter

If you want to keep up with CoastGuardNews as it changes, we are happy to introduce the latest tool in our arsenal. In addition to our RSS feed and email updates, we have established a CoastGuardNews Twitter.

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The biggest difference between how most people use Twitter and how CoastGuardNews is using Twitter is that we will be sending out twitters whenever we publish a new story.

How do you use it? If you don’t already have a Twitter account, go to Twitter and sign up for a free account. Then go to the CoastGuardNews Twitter page and click on the follow button. You can now get the latest updates to CoastGuardNews on your mobile phone via texting, instant messaging, email or if you are using the Firefox browser you can use an add-ons for immediate notifications.

We hope you enjoy this new way of keeping up with CoastGuardNews and would like to thank Ryan Erickson from an Unofficial Coast Guard Blog for giving us the idea.

A New Way to Learn at the Reserve Boat College

By Petty Officer David R. Marin

SEATTLE - Located in the remote fishing town of Ilwaco Wash., the Coast Guard’s National Motor Lifeboat School (NMLBS) and Station Cape Disappointment serve as two of the Coast Guard’s most challenging training grounds. Generally occupied by active duty personnel, from May 5-16, the station and NMLBS were predominantly populated by Coast Guard Reservists.

Station Cape Disappointment and the NMLBS hosted the first Coast Guard Thirteenth District / Group Astoria Reserve Boat College.  Twenty two students from five stations, including 10 students from Station Cape Disappointment, nine from Station Grays Harbor in Westport, Wash., two from Station Umpqua River in Winchester Bay, Ore., one student from Station Yaquina Bay, in Newport, Ore., and one from Station Rio Vista, in Rio Vista, Calif., attended this training in the hopes of learning the skills needed to be crewman qualified aboard the 25-foot response boats.

“The Reserve Boat College is a program sponsored and developed by Group Astoria to give the reservists an opportunity to receive their qualification training without interruption and without hindering the capabilities and daily activities of their units,” said Lt. Cmdr. Catherine A. Holdren, from Group Astoria.

Reservists were formally integrated into boat forces to support the operational needs of their assigned units in 1994.

Adm. Thomas Collins, the Commandant of the Coast Guard at that time, presented a clear direction for the Reserve forces.  Adm. Collins stated that the main purpose of the Reserves is to maintain the competencies to perform three prioritized functions; maritime homeland security, domestic and expeditionary support to national defense and domestic (natural or man-made) disaster response and recovery in January 2006.

The College was developed in an effort to achieve a higher level of deployable boat force readiness and to improve the integration between the Active Duty and Reserve components in carrying out the three main Reserve functions said Holdren.

“We took lessons learned from the First District’s effort about a year ago,” added Holdren. “One thing that they recommended was to expand the course from one week to two weeks because there is just so much to cover.  So we did that and provided training modules that are otherwise difficult to get in a concentrated environment.”

The seeds for this college were planted when the Thirteenth District assembled a work group, in 2006, to collaboratively analyze the training requirements and how best to qualify the Reservists.  Out of that, a recommendation was made to accelerate the qualification process by concentrating the boat forces at locations where the right platforms existed.

“Another thing about the development of the Boat College was the concern of the impact that developing a course like this might have on the active duty command,” said Holdren.  “We assembled a task force to alleviate the burden of planning and coordinating the logistics as much as possible from the active command so they could focus on their daily missions and not be burned out by the time of the college.”

The task force was able to acquire and coordinate the use of five 25-foot response boats from stations Cape Disappointment, Grays Harbor and Sector Portland.  They were also able to outsource instructors for Team Coordination Training (TCT), first aid and the Scalable Integrated Navigation System (SINS) Laboratory.

With these assets the task force formed the Boat College with a curriculum consisting of 20 blocks of instruction covering 71 qualification tasks including 24 hours of underway time.

“We designed the course and, being in house, we were able to make it so that when we go through all the tasks in the contingency crewman Personal Qualification Standards (PQS.) We can be flexible enough to change things around at a moments notice,” said Lt. Karl Hellberg, the Task Force Leader with Group Astoria.  “So if our sailors wanted more practice in a certain area, we could change our schedule around and give them more time at the SINS lab, more time navigating, etcetera.  The whole thing was to get more hands-on time while getting them through their PQS, and that’s just one step.”

“Once we get people qualified as crewmembers we can move onto coxswain qualifications and hopefully onto boarding officer and finally have fully functioning crews out here on the Colombia River doing patrols,” added Hellberg.

“This training has been real helpful at keeping us dialed into the fundamentals that we need to be knowledgeable in as Coast Guardsmen,” said Petty Officer 1st Class John Sheridan, of Station Grays Harbor.  “The first week we worked with TCT, CPR and first aid.  We moved along real well and, towards the end of the week, we did a lot of navigational training with chart work and SINS.”

“The SINS lab has been a huge asset for us and the training,” said Holdren.  “Some of the feedback that we are getting from our boat crews is that the lab gives them the confidence needed for when they get out to the on-water portion, knowing exactly how to set it up.  The advantage of the local course is that it is very student-centered and can be tailored to the students and exactly what they need at that moment.  We were able to provide that extra experience for the students and that has translated to a more confident crewmember and an accelerated qualification.”

“It is my first time at Cape Disappointment and this Boat College is a novel idea,” said Sheridan.  “It’s all about the basics and staying focused and dialed into the things we need to have in our arsenal of knowledge to do the jobs we need to do as reservists on our boats.”

“It has been a real privilege to be here in Cape D working with the instructors and brushing up on some of the things we already know,” added Sheridan.  “And those who are new to the reserves can get on the same page so that we are all operating with the same basic knowledge that we need to have every time that we get underway.”

Another key component of the local model is the reduction of the impact the Boat College training has on the active duty personnel.

“We wanted to take some of that burden off the active duty crew and concentrate it into a two week course so that throughout the year that burden is lessened and that the reservists have that emersion experience so that they don’t have skill attrition throughout that eighteen months that it normally takes to qualify as a crew member,” said Holdren.

“The other thing that we insisted on and got a lot of support with, was that we have active duty members from the stations that the reservists are going to be assigned to, do the training,” added Chief Warrant Officer Terence Garvey, of Group Astoria.  “That way we don’t go through the steps of having someone trained and having to go back to their station needing to prove that they have learned this information in order to get qualified.  The person who is qualifying them is conducting the training.”

The planning for the Boat College began in January with a Thirteenth District Senior Reserve conference.  Rear Adm. John P. Currier, the Commander of the Thirteenth District, expressed his interest in developing boat force readiness and providing local utilities for the training of the Reserves.

“We were already headed in the direction of the Boat College and said we could make it happen before the (search and rescue) season kicked off,” said Holdren.  “It was a little ambitious, but here we are five months later and the Boat College is up and running.”

Interest in this type of reserve training has grown, starting from the First District, which has three out of their five sectors planning on running Boat Crew College training events this year, to the units in the Thirteenth District and Eleventh District where reservists have been turned away because of full enrollment in the classes.

“We are delighted by the interest that this effort has received across the Coast Guard and we hope that our local initiative will inform other efforts to develop rapidly deployable boat forces,” Holdren said.  “I would recommend that other efforts along this line follow this model in really reaching out and utilizing the key resources that are available within their sector, group or command.”

The Night Shift

by Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher D. McLaughlin

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -The sky is set a blaze with warm colors of red and orange as the setting of the day’s sun falls closer to the horizon. Night is fast approaching and is welcomed by a blanket of thick, warm, vaporous fog. Laughter set off by undertones of a ping-pong ball slapping against a table is heard from the open window of the cafeteria at Coast Guard Station Barnegat Light, N.J.

Members of the Coast Guard for the most part don’t have a regular nine to five schedule. They take turns standing duty, duty that keeps them away from their homes and keeps them at work all night. After 5 p.m. the regular work crew heads home. The atmosphere at work becomes a mixture of work and play. The night crews spend their time doing activities ranging from patrols to video games. Some families even come to the station to join them for dinner with the kids. Working after hours is a sacrifice, but it is also a big part of the job.

Station Barnegat Light is one of many Coast Guard stations that dot the coast. The people who work there spend more time together at the station then they do at their homes. After the regular workday, a crew of 12 people remain ready to respond at a moments notice. They are the night shift.

Most nights, the Barnegat night crew pushes tables together in the cafeteria and places enough chairs for all of them to enjoy dinner.

“The smaller group is little more personable, and we eat all our meals together,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class James Aiken, a crew member at Station Barnegat Light.

After the meal and a game of ping-pong, some of the crew heads up to their dorm-style rooms to get dressed in cold-weather survival gear. They are making preparations to head out into Barnegat Inlet aboard one of their 47-foot boats.

“Every evening, as the sun goes down, and every morning, as the sun rises, we are underway reporting back the conditions and the water temperature of the Inlet,” said Petty Officer 1st Class George Daws, a crewman at Station Barnegat Light.

The small boat crew heads out to sea, the light from the nearby lighthouse cuts through the wall of dense fog. The crew makes their report and heads back to the station for the evening. During the trip back, one crewmember makes a plan to raid the kitchen of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while others plan to head off to the gym and workout.

Working together for so many days and hours builds a bond among the crews where they become a substitute family to one another.

“It’s definitely a big family, and we all treat each other like a family,” said Seaman Apprentice Michael Hilbert, a crewman at Station Barnegat Light. “It definitely makes it more personal. You’re working with these people, you know them, their life story, and your relationship with them is more meaningful.”

After a time, the crew completes their activities for the evening and heads off to their rooms to go to sleep. The hallway at the bottom of the stairs rests quietly in the dark except for the red glow of an exit sign at one end. Near the exit sign, a watch stander in the communications room passes the radio guard to another watch stander at another unit. He then crawls into his sleeping bag on the fold-out bed he took out of the closet moments before. With the hum of the radios near him, the lull quickly fades him off to sleep.

Meanwhile, 35 miles to the southwest of Barnegat Light, the night crew at Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City, N.J., is settling into their nighttime routine.

Lt. Bruce Kimmell, a helicopter pilot at the air station, is visited by his wife and three daughters with a slow-cooker full of pasta in tow.

“I bring him dinner so he doesn’t have to order pizza every night,” said Andrea Kimmell. “I won’t see him until Monday night, and I like to come up and see him at the end of the day.  It’s not that bad when he’s working at night. I would prefer to have him home though, but you get used to it.”

After dinner, Kimmell follows his wife and kids out to the parking lot carrying the slow-cooker his wife brought for him. He loads his kids into the minivan, kisses them goodbye and says farewell to his wife.

The operations center at the air station, normally abuzz with activity and radio static, is eerily quiet during the night shift, adding calm to where there otherwise is not.

“At night you can have periods of total downtime with nothing going on where at other times you have everything breaking loose and you’re it - No one else to help you,” said Thomas Peck, a 17-year veteran search and rescue coordinator.

The hours a SAR controller works are long. Each controller works a 12-hour shift, and at night they’re usually working alone.

During slow nights, the inactivity can put you in a lull. You have to keep your brain active by doing something Peck said.

There is a contrast between working during the day and at night. With the nightshift come sacrifices, but the sacrifices the crews make are for the sake of the job. The job they were trained to do to keep those traveling the seas safe while the rest of us sleep.

“My three little girls know daddy’s got the duty,” said Kimmell. “I miss my family. I like to spend as much time with them as I can, but duty is duty. My house is not far from the airport, so I tell them if they hear a helicopter flying over, it’s me.”

Freedom Never Cries

This song by Vladimir John Ondrasik III (”Five for Fighting”) is a fitting tribute to our troops as we celebrate Memorial Day. . Our military troops who honorably serve our nation–and those who have died doing so–are among those to whom honor is due. As we celebrate this Memorial Day, let us never forget that freedom is not free.

A Long Day for One Atlantic City Aircrew

by Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher D. McLaughlin

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -As the duty aircrews of Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City went to bed, Sunday, May 11, a powerful storm known by locals as a “nor’easter” was brewing offshore. At 3a.m., the crews were awakened by a distress call from a 27-foot sailboat with two people aboard, signaling the start of a very busy day for the air station

Working in the air station’s operations center that morning, Lt. j.g. Bruce Plummer looked at the weather and expected the worse.

“Usually when weather is this bad, you know the crews are not going to get a lot of sleep,” said Plummer.  “Despite weather warnings some people find themselves in dangerous situations on the water. It causes us to have to go out and help them.”

Plummer briefed the duty helicopter crew that the boat’s engines had failed and they were drifting onto the rocks. Within 30-minutes the crew was flying to the scene in Delaware Bay near Philadelphia facing the beginnings of a raging storm.

“I’ve never felt turbulence like that before,” said Lt. John Scott, a helicopter pilot at the air station. “I’ve flown enough where I know what’s going on and what to expect but I hadn’t experienced it that intense before.”

Scott and his crew arrived on scene. He could see a boat from Port Penn, Del., Fire and Rescue Department trying to assist but the water depth was too shallow for their rescue boat  to get to the two sailors aboard the Sailing Vessel Tapped Out.

The helicopter crew hovered above the flailing boat fighting strong winds. A rescue swimmer was lowered to the water and the two men jumped from the sailboat into hip deep water and helped into the rescue basket. One by one they were hoisted into the helicopter and flown to Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City where they spent the remainder of the night.

“I don’t want to have to fly in turbulence like that again. It wasn’t any fun,” said Scott.

Several hours later, the storm grew progressively worse.

“We change [the watch] over at eight o’clock in the morning and at 7:50 the next case came in. I launched that crew before changing duty to the next on-coming duty officer,” said Plummer.

For four Coast Guard aviators, the most dangerous test they ever faced in their lives was about to become reality.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday this is the Russell W. Peterson about 14 miles east of Rehoboth Beach. We’re a three-legged jack-up. We’re breaking up. We lost one, possibly two legs. We need immediate assistance,” said the captain of the 64-foot research vessel in his distress call to the Coast Guard.

Two crewmen aboard the Russell W. Peterson were in an extremely dangerous predicament off the Delaware shore. Waves the size of buildings pounded the boat and the captain was fighting to maintain control of his ship.

“As soon as the hangar door opened everybody knew it, even the senior chief here came out to help get the plane ready,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Tye Conklin, a rescue swimmer at the air station.  “The guys knew this was going to be something big.”

The aircrew took off from the air station in hurricane force winds with wind speeds reaching 80 mph.  A category one hurricane has wind speeds of  74 mph.

“It was the worst weather I have ever flown in, in my entire life,” said Lt. Clay Clary, a helicopter pilot at the air station. “We were getting beat. It felt like someone was shaking the helicopter up and down and from side to side.”

The helicopter crew arrived to the location of the faltering ship and began assessing the situation.

“We did a visual approach and pulled into a hover about 100 feet above the boat,” said Conklin. “You could see they were still underway coming with the waves.”

The aircrew made contact with the ship. The captain radioed that he was  still driving the boat and couldn’t leave the helm to look for his crewman. The rescue crew decided to put Conklin down on the boat to find the other person. Conklin knew he was putting his own life at risk.

“It took three attempts to lower me down,” said Conklin. The first two attempts were unsuccessful because the boat was still coming at us. Our helicopter had to actually fly backward.”

Clary and his co-pilot flew the helicopter backward to keep the nose in the wind and to keep pace with the direction of the ship.

“Normally, when you do a hoist, you try to have the vessel go into the wind and you’re flying the same the direction the vessel is moving,” said Clary. “I had to match his speed by flying backward. I’ve never done this before. It was insane.”

On the third attempt,  Conklin was lowered a little bit at a time so he wouldn’t swing too much in the wind. The pilots were able to match the speed of the boat and got Conklin right on the deck of the ship. He unhooked himself from the hoist cable and went right up to the pilothouse to talk to the captain.

“The captain said ‘welcome aboard and I do mean welcome because I knew what you did to get here,’” said Conklin. “It kind of broke the ice and it made me realize that he knew he was in trouble.”

Conklin asked where the other crewman was.  The captain told him he hadn’t seen him in while. Conklin knew he had to act quickly to try and find him. He went below to search for the man but first he had to move all the gear that was blocking the hatch to the lower deck. Once inside, Conklin discovered where the missing crewman was.

“Everything had been ripped off the wall- just in a big pile,” said Conklin. “The gentleman was underneath all that stuff. A refrigerator and a broken TV. I had to get that stuff off of him. He had no vital signs.”

Conklin dragged the man on to the open deck and signaled the helicopter to lower the basket. The captain and Conklin put the man in the basket and he was hoisted into the helicopter. The ship was ready to capsize at any moment and Conklin and the captain were ready to get out of there.

“When the second hoist came down, I hooked myself and the captain up to it and the two of us were lifted up together,” said Conklin. “The whole time he was telling me if this boat rolls 15 degrees more the whole thing is going to capsize.”

The aircrew fought their way through the raging storm arriving at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md., hospital staff met the crew on the helicopter pad and took both men inside to the emergency room.  The man who had been under the debris below deck was deceased. The helicopter crew landed at the airport in Ocean City, Md., to refuel and take a break from the storm before making their way back to the air station. Four minutes into their return flight, they received word of another mariner in distress just 12 minutes off the coast of Ocean City.

A man aboard a 37-foot sailboat with a 100-foot mast with no sails, no motor, no radio and a broken rudder was desperately awaiting rescue.

“He couldn’t steer- he was kind of a cork floating in the ocean,” said Conklin. “We pulled into a hover over him.”

Conklin again was lowered into the water to brave the thrashing sea. Conklin instructed the man to jump into the water, where he hooked him up to the hoist and both were lifted from the water and transported to Ocean City Municipal Airport.

The aircrew eventually made it back to the air station and had plenty of time to reflect on their experience.

“It was definitely scary and it challenged us all,” said Clary. “Getting out there, flying the aircraft and fighting low cloud ceilings. It was pretty hazardous.”

None of the rescuers or the people they saved from the sea that day will forget the experience any time soon.

“On a whole everyone did a good job,” said Conklin. “We were the ones out there but there was a 100 people backing us up. It was good communications on the radio and we were getting good information fed to us.  We’re only as good as the information we get.”

Coast Guard Foundation Awards

On May 2, 2008 the Coast Guard Foundation held its annual awards dinner. There were 3 primary awards given out, the Admiral John B. Hayes award for Unit Excellence, the Admiral James S. Gracey Award for Professional Excellence and the Admiral Chester R. Bender Awards for Heroic Excellence.

Chief Petty Officer Leigh W. Johannsen, a Boatswain’s Mate, of New Richland, Minn., received the 2007 Coast Guard Foundation Admiral James S. Gracey Award for Professional Excellence. Named after the seventeenth Commandant of the Coast Guard, the award is given to Coast Guard members displaying professional excellence.

The 2007 Coast Guard Foundation Admiral John B. Hayes Award for Unit Excellence was presented to Group/Air Station Astoria, Aids to Navigation Team Astoria and Station Tillamook, for their rescue and support efforts during an unprecedented winter storm that devastated the Pacific Northwest region in December 2007.

The crew of Coast Guard rescue helicopter 6525 from Air Station Kodiak received the 2007 Coast Guard Foundation Admiral Chester R. Bender Award on May 2, 2008. Named after the fourteenth Commandant of the Coast Guard, the award recognizes Coast Guard members for heroic efforts.

Coast Guard Auxiliarist making the meals

PORTSMOUTH, Va. - The Coast Guard Auxiliary, an all-volunteer organization, provides aid for the Coast Guard in a myriad of ways such as conducting boating safety courses, helping out at Coast Guard boat stations, monitoring radios, and more, has found yet another unique way to take some weight off of the shoulders of Coast Guardsmen in the fleet.
The Coast Guard Auxiliary, an all-volunteer organization, provides aid for the Coast Guard in a myriad of ways such as conducting boating safety courses, helping out at Coast Guard boat stations, monitoring radios, and more, has found yet another unique way to take some weight off of the shoulders of Coast Guardsmen in the fleet.

Food Service Specialists (FSs) in the Coast Guard are a busy group. They get up early to cook and serve meals for the crew of their unit and they work late, cleaning up the galley in the evening.

For many Coast Guard units, the FSs have little time for much aside from their primary duties as cooks. Due to their demanding rotation as duty cooks, it can be difficult for them to pick up additional training and collateral duties such as becoming boarding team members. With two or three cooks at a unit, when one takes a vacation, the others have to step up to fill in.

To help shoulder a bit of the load, the Coast Guard Auxiliary has a pilot program called the Auxiliary Chef program, or AUXCHEF. Through this program, auxiliarists are trained to perform the duties of Coast Guard food service specialists. With this training, they cater events such as changes of command and they fill in for cooks in need.

Recently, Petty Officer 2nd Class Felix Jimenez, a Food Service Specialist at Station Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Va., wanted to take leave for a week. There are only two FSs at the station, and the leave he requested conflicted with his duty rotation. Luckily, Jimenez’ supervisor, Petty Officer 1st Class Willie Scott, a Boatswain’s Mate at the station, knew of the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s AUXCHEF program and it’s chairman, Ron Ellis.

“Since Station Little Creek only has two cooks that work two days on, two off with alternating weekends, it places a burden on the station, cooks, and duty section to cover when one cook is on leave,” said Scott. “So I contacted Mr. Ellis and explained our situation and he agreed to provide coverage for the days we requested,”

As an auxiliarist, Ellis wanted to help the Coast Guard in any way that he could. When he heard about the AUXCHEF program, he decided that it sounded like something that he would be able to do well.

The AUXCHEF program started in 2003 in the First Southern Coast Guard Auxiliary district - which includes New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Later, Ellis, of Louisa, Va., brought the program to the Fifth Southern District - which includes Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C., and North Carolina.

Ellis said that when he first picked up the program, he was unsure about how to go about getting it really started in the Fifth Southern district. After receiving little contact with the program up north, he just made it his own and worked it out himself. “I’m going to fly with this thing,” he said.

“I had been on cutters before I got involved with the program, and I noticed that the FSs weren’t always getting the help they needed,” said Ellis. “Very seldom could they get someone to relieve them. So I thought this would be the best opportunity for some auxiliarists to start stepping in.”

Ellis decided to provide that help, he said. Since his assumption of the role of AUXCHEF chairman for his district, he has served at two small boat stations and four cutters, filling in for the units’ FSs. In addition, he has trained 21 Coast Guard Auxiliary members to serve in the AUXCHEF program.

Most of the cooking knowledge Ellis has was acquired from the Coast Guard. Ellis is one of a few civilians to have completed the Coast Guard FS class “A” school. In addition, the Coast Guard sent him to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., to take a course on small dishes and appetizers.

Now, when a Fifth District station or cutter’s food service staff is short-handed and the unit doesn’t have enough hands to cover him, there’s a constantly available group of qualified auxiliarists who are willing and eager to step in and get the job done.

Wherever Ellis and the other AUXCHEFs go to work, they are well-received, he said.

“We all got along very well. We had a great time,” said Ellis of his experiences working with various Coast Guard crews. “The morale of the Coast Guard is the food.”

The crews most definitely enjoy his cooking, he said. They always ask when he’s coming back.

Currently, AUXCHEF is only working in the Fifth Southern District but Ellis has plans for expansion. If all goes as planned, this program will eventually spread nationwide, said Ellis.

“I see a future in this program where I would like it go from Maine all the way down to Florida, and then eventually work out West,” he said. “Once I get the cadre and a group of instructors to where they can work their areas, then we’ll just work on pulling more people into the program.”

Anyone interested in the Coast Guard Auxiliary can go to nws.cgaux.org and fill out an online form which put them in contact with the closest Auxiliary flotilla.

Auxiliarists interested in getting involved with the AUXCHEF program may e-mail Ron Ellis at raegraph@msn.com.