Coast Guard
Ah, made in Italy. Three small words that set a grand expectation, suggest the unexpected and make dreams come true.
When one thinks of the responsibilities assigned to the United States Coast Guard Station Sturgeon Bay, most people think of the search and rescue duties. After all, the crew is maintaining a rich legacy that dates back to the when the station was established in 1886 under the authority of Coast Guard’s predecessor, the United States Lifesaving Service.
That 125-year history isn’t lost on the station’s commanding officer Wayne Spritka, BMCS.
“We don’t have the room for a small museum like some of the other stations have,” said Spritka, who is more commonly referred to as “senior chief” by his active crew of 27 enlisted personnel augmented by nine reservists and more than 35 auxiliary. “But there’s history hanging from our walls all over the station. It’s important for all our crew to understand the historical significance of this place. The crew is constantly rotating so most have no idea.”
The “Canal Station,” as it is popularly referred to due to its location at the Lake Michigan entrance to the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, has a fleet of boats that can regularly be seen plying the waters of Sturgeon Bay. In fact, the station recently took ownership of a pair of new 45-foot rescue boats to replace the 41-footers that were at the core of its mission both in Sturgeon Bay as well as the seasonal station on Washington Island.
But as winter sets in and the boats get pulled from the water and Washington Island closes, it might seem that the Sturgeon Bay station could settle in for a long winter’s nap. Actually, while it does provide a good time for maintenance-related projects, the station’s primary responsibilities are as prevalent in the winter as during the summer.
The station will send 16 people to Ft. Knox for automatic weapons training related to the station’s Homeland Security duties which have been expanded to provide security escort for the new naval ships being built in Marinette. Others will head to South Carolina for law enforcement training. There are marine environmental protection responsibilities that carry on year-round as well.
The Coast Guard couldn’t have a better man overseeing the operation in Spritka, who has a keen understanding of the station’s sizeable area of responsibility. His first assignment upon entering the Coast Guard in 1990 was at the station in Sturgeon Bay followed a few years later by a stint on the USCGC Mobile Bay which is stationed in the city.
“It’s a unique coverage area,” explained Spritka. “We have all of Green Bay, its islands as well as portions of Lake Michigan. We have to coordinate with two different state governments, six county governments and a lot of municipalities with their fire departments and law enforcement.”
That coordination is vitally important in the station’s search and rescue efforts, most of which is concentrated in the four warmest weather months.
“We get about 80 calls during that time while most other stations will get 80 cases all year,” said Spritka. But don’t get the idea that the station’s search and rescue work is over when the water freezes.
Spritka said the station’s capabilities change as vessels like the Mobile Bay handle commercial traffic on the lake. But anyone who lives along either Sturgeon Bay or Green Bay knows that there is plenty of activity on the water, especially after it freezes.
The area is blessed with a passionate, and some might say over-zealous, population of ice fishermen who keep the station at the ready. And the station has a relatively new tool to aide in the rescue of the ice-related mishaps. The SPC-AIR 22102 is a trailered air boat. The flat-bottomed, propeller-driven vessel that looks like something roaring through the Everglades is proving to be an ideal tool for ice rescue.
Spritka sits on the Coast Guard’s District Ice Rescue Committee which has continually worked to enhance the vessels that initially appeared off Detroit in the early 1990s. The vessel has grown to where today’s new air boats measure 22 feet and feature a heated compartment with a capacity of four.
Spritka points out that heat became a priority when it was determined that rescue efforts were more effective with a crew that hadn’t frozen on the way to the scene.
While helicopters out of Traverse City, Mich., are used in ice rescues, Spritka said that they don’t have de-icing capabilities which can limit their effectiveness. So the ice boats, which stand ready on their trailers, are driven to the most convenient access to the ice where the boat is off-loaded and dispatched to the scene.
The station crew maintains a map of access points throughout the winter, sending out personnel on a regular basis to pinpoint those locations.
“Speed is so important,” said Spritka, who explained the rescue attempts before the introduction of ice boats involved hauling a 12-foot V-hulled aluminum boat across the ice.
“It was all manpower and it often took time to get to the rescue scene and then haul the victim back to shore,” said Spritka.
The concept of driving one of these powerful boats across open ice without brakes sounds a bit tricky.
“There is an art to it. There are times you don’t think of it as a boat because it might never hit water,” said Spritka, who dismissed the idea that these babies are the next best thing to an amusement park ride.
“It’s fun for maybe the first hour,” he said, pointing out that ice banging up against the metal hull makes communication difficult. “The men are in dry suits and that’s not particularly comfortable.”
There have been relatively few ice rescues in recent years – six each in the past two winters. They normally involve rescuing fishermen off ice flows.
“But for these people it’s worth everything,” said Spritka, whose crew regularly practices ice recovery techniques for just those rare occurrences when they might have to pull someone from the water. “We try to use ice rescue training as morale events.”
After all it is winter in Door County and while the station remains on alert just as it would any July day, there is time for installing new carpet or replacing a well water pump and training the one-third of the crew that is new to the station.
“These older buildings need tender, loving care,” said Spritka. “There’s a lot of history here.”
