Great Lakes Winter Storms & CG SAR

[BuoyJumper]

We used to get blasted pretty good in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  Sturgeon Bay in Door County is located on a thin peninsula dividing Green Bay from Lake Michigan.  When we would get Artic blasts coming out of Lake Superior we would get burried in snow.  Mrs Buoy and I had a duplex right on the water overlooking Sturgeon Bay (where you see the red square) right at the edge of Potowatomi State Park just to our NNW.  I have photos where you can't see the front of our duplex, all you can see is our roof protruding out of the snow.  One time I made the mistake of not staying on the ship when a blizzard was forecast.  I woke up in the morning and could not get out my front door, it opened out like most do and the snow was to the top of the front door.  Fortunately I had the day off and didn't have to get to the ship.  To get out, I had to crawl out one of the side windows and dig my way to the front door.  From then on I stayed on the ship if a blizzard was forecast.  With the wind chill factor it was not uncommon for us to have temperatures of 10 to 30 degrees below zero during the winter months.  Now you know why I live in Texas, four years in that kind of snow and cold was enough!  

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[EX-CG-GM]

Sparky-

My brother was on the Naugatuck in th e70's.  I went to visit him in either 76 or 77 (Hell, it coulda been 78!).

Another place that is frequently famous for being the coldest spot in the U.S. is Cutbank, Montana.  I was stationed with a guy from there.

[Salba]

Never been to Sault Ste (Soo)... but everytime my mahal pissed me off...I threated to put in for orders to the Group (now Sector) there!  Just the threat of taking my less than 5ft filipnia wife to that type of country was usually enough to buy me some sweatness and light for a few more days!!!!   Lol.

Best Wishes

[EX-CG-GM]

I shoveled a little snow at CG Base Boston once when I was in transiet    That's it, that's my cold weather story 

V-

Whenever I'd hear stories about Ocean Station Bravo I always felt a bit guilty that I was spending all my time on the west coast or Hawaii, the P.I., etc.

But then I'd pop an ice cold San Miguel and say "**** 'em".   

[sparky]

 
Sometimes the old girl just got tired of breaking ice and we all just had to lend a hand.

[BuoyJumper]

Yeah, know the feeling Sparky .... sometimes the EN's and the EM's just can't keep em going ...........  

[sparky]

Ha, Good One!
I suppose every icebreaking boat has a picture similar to this. I have one somewhere of the Acacia without the stripe and a different crew doing the same thing.

It sure would have been nice though if the deck crew could have taken the time to refresh the paint every few years.

[Cash]

International Falls was it....we always had that question on social studies tests.

Thanks, Buoy, for the pic...that helps.

Rusty...how are you feeling?

Embarrass, MN is nestled in a valley between two short mountain ranges, which cut it off from the weather and often creates an unusual temperature sink anomily.  It can be 60 below zero in Embarrass and 25 miles away here in Eveleth, a balmy minus 40.

As a rule, I Falls is the cold spot, which means it's companion City, Fort Francis Ontario is in the same pickle.

[BuoyJumper]

The Last Voyage of the CGC MESQUITE (WLB-305)

Ultimately, my ship the Coast Guard cutter MESQUITE would become a victim to the storms that ravage the Great Lakes during the winter.

The Coast Guard cutter SUNDEW (WLB-404) was in yards for unscheduled repair.  The MESQUITE was dispatched by District 9 headquarters to complete the SUNDEW’s fall buoy run of removing her buoys before winter ice-in.  In the early morning hours of 4 December 1989, rushing to beat a storm front that was moving in, the MESQUITE removed an NOAA buoy marking a shoal on the tip of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula in 2-4 foot seas. The crew of the MESQUITE was unfamiliar with this area of Lake Superior as her operational area was Lake Michigan.  With the last buoy safely aboard and secured on deck, the MESQUITE’s Commanding Officer, LCDR John Lynch passed command to Ensign Susan Subocz with the command to get underway and went below for a cup of coffee.   What the young Ensign did not realize being unfamiliar with this area of Lake Superior, is that the MESQUITE had drifted some distance from her last known navigational fix.  To further complicate matters, a shore based navigational aid was extinguished and it was a dark night with the moon and stars covered over by clouds from the oncoming front.   

At 2:10 a.m., without taking proper navigational fixes to confirm the MESQUITE’s position, Ensign Subocz got the ship underway and within minutes ran the MESQUITE hard aground and holed on the very same rocky point of land from which the last buoy had been removed. Feeling the jolt and hearing the sound of the hull grinding on the rocks, LCDR Lynch and the XO, Ltjg Bills raced to the bridge.  The XO relieved the shaken Ensign.  At first the damage was slight, but the pounding on the reef was quickly enlarging the hole on the ship’s starboard side and the engine room was flooding.     

The MESQUITE hard aground, is battered by the stong winds and seas typical of winter storms on the Great Lakes  (USCG photos)

(In my opinion, LCDR Lynch should have known better than to turn the conn over to a junior officer in unfamiliar waters. During my tenure on the MESQUITE, serving under three Commanding Officers, not once did I ever see my C.O. turn the conn over to a junior officer while the ship was still in danger.  It was this very same mistake made by the Commanding Offiicer of MESQUITE’s sister ship BLACKTHRON (WLB-391) that led to the BLACKTHORN TRAGEDY in 1980, with the loss of nearly half her crew.  The BLACKTHORN TRAGEDY was studied in depth by Cadet Lynch and his class at the Coast Guard Academy.)

After failed attempts to back the cutter off of the reef and with the bilge pumps unable to stay ahead of the water that was now flooding the engine room, it was decided that the best thing to do was to remove the crew and come back after the seas had subsided.  Then a salvage crew could remove the buoys and as much weight as possible, shore up the hole, pump out the water and then refloat the ship.
   
At 4:05 a.m., orders were piped to prepare to abandon ship. The MESQUITE reported to Station Duluth that there were three medical evacuations. These individuals were taken to Portage View Hospital in Han**** and were treated and released. The rest of the crew was ferried by the MESQUITE’s small boats to the M/V MANGAL DESAI, a 600-foot long freighter that had responded to aid the MESQUITE’s evacuation.  By 8:30 a.m., the crew had evacuated the MESQUITE and the Commanding Officer was the last to depart.

Due to the storm that had moved in, the MESQUITE pounded on the rock shoal for days, literally pounding the bottom out of her and making it impossible for the Coast Guard to get back aboard to try and save the ship. 

Cutter ACACIA's smallboat moves in to secure the wreck and to deploy oil containment aparatus   (Photos courtesy of Rxjeff)

Once the storm had passed the Coast Guard had divers evaluate the damage and the damage was found to be too extensive so the Coast Guard declared the MESQUITE to be a total loss. The District Headquarters dispatched the ACACIA WLB-406 to remove all possible contaminates and to place fuel containment aparatus around the Mesquite and to secure the wreck.  Note the toppled main mast from the pounding she took on the reef during the storm.  In January of 1990 the MESQUITE was decommissioned and her crew reassigned. 

Battered by the reef, the winds and seas the MESQUITE waits for spring to come to the Upper Peninsula

The winds of winter and the death grip of the ice furthered the damage to the MESQUITE as she sat grounded on the rocks for the entire winter, until the thaw in late spring when preparations could be made to dismantle and scuttle the ship.

A crew arrives from HQ to make a preliminary report on how remove hazardous materials and dismantle the ship (B Gilreath photos)

In the early summer of 1990 the MESQUITE was dismantled and scuttled in 110-feet of water in July as a premier dive attraction in the Keweenaw Underwater Preserve.   As Irony would have it, the XO of the MESQUITE that fateful night would become the last Commanding Officer of MESQUITE’s sister ship the CGC ACACIA, the only 180-foot buoy tender of the original thirty-nine to still be on active duty when she was decommissioned on June 7, 2006.  Another irony to me at least, is that the MESQUITE sits off of Fort Wilkins State Park and I only live a few minutes from Mesquite, Texas.

View a Slide Show of diving on the CGC MESQUITE
Photo Album of scuba diving the MESQUITE
An in depth write up on the grounding of the MESQUITE from the Commandant's Bulletin and more photos can be found in my Mesquite Photo Album by clicking on the link in my Signature Line.

[EX-CG-GM]

Would I be corect in assuming the C.O.s career was pretty much over after that?  probably didn't do the J.O.'s career any good either.

[vftb]

Where the hell were the QM's 

[EX-CG-GM]

Where the hell were the QM's 

I was kinda wondering the same thing.  A good senior QM would have made some pertinent "suggestions" that could have avoided the whole thing.

[BuoyJumper]

Where the hell were the QM's 

That was one of the first things I thought of too when I heard of the grounding.  Apparently the navigational crew that had been on the bridge when the buoy was removed from station had gone below when the buoy was secured on deck and the only ones left after the C.O. went below was the OOD, the QMOW and the helmsman.  From what I read in Stonehouse's book "Shipwreck of the Mesquite" apparently the QMOW took radar bearings and nothing else which were confirmed by the OOD.  There were no other bearings taken using available navigational aids like GPS or Loran to determine the ship's position before getting underway, which were found to be in violation of the C.O.'s standing night orders and USCG Procedures. 

Just inexperience and human error that could have easily been avoided.

[vftb]

QMOW took radar bearings and nothing else

If everything was working properly and if the QM knew what he was doing that shoulda been good.  I'm not badgering you, cause I know you weren't there, I'm just 

[sparky]

When I was on the Acacia a salty ran aground somewhere around Thunder Bay Island I think it was...Name was something like MV Nordmere. We went on board right after the crew had abandoned ship and it was just weird seeing everything as they left it...coffee cups and playing cars on the table etc...That was in early fall of 66 I think. Anyway, it stayed out there on the rocks all winter and when we went through the area the next spring it had just been beat to death all crumpled and so on. I suppose someone salvaged it at some point but it has always intrigued me how the winter storms and ice just destroys anything that isn't supposed to be there.

If it was Keith Bills on the MESQUITE, he was promoted to CDR the day of the ACACIA's decommisioning and his retirement which I attended in June of 06 in CHarlevoix. Last I heard he was a civilian contractor on the new MACKINAW doing training. Seemed like a great guy and was well liked by the crew. I think he was a mustang, former Bos'n or something.