Coast Guard Cutter Returns Home After Three-Month Deployment

From a U.S. Coast Guard press release:

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Waesche is scheduled to return to its homeport at Coast Guard Island in Alameda Sunday at 9:45 a.m., after a 91-day deployment to the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Since departing Jan. 20, Waesche completed an 18,000-mile patrol in support of joint counter-drug operations off the coast of California and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. During that time the cutter and crew demonstrated their capability as a multi-mission unit.

Early in their patrol Waesche participated in a search and rescue mission assisting two mariners 90 miles west of San Diego when their sailboat began taking on water. Also in January law enforcement crews aboard the cutter from a boat approximately 300 miles west of San Diego, apprehended three suspects and recovered 70 bales which tested positive for marijuana.

During the mid-patrol break in Panama City, Panama, Waesche crew members participated in a community relations project by painting and restoring a local school.

Cutters like Waesche routinely conduct operations from South America to the Bering Sea where their unmatched combination of range, speed, and ability to operate in extreme weather provides the mission flexibility necessary to conduct counter-narcotics, homeland security, and alien migrant interdiction operations, domestic fisheries protection, search and rescue, and other Coast Guard missions at great distances from shore keeping threats far from the U.S. mainland.