coast guard

Monster of the deep

I spent most of the 1990’s as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, I was stationed in the Central Florida area the entire 8 years. This story comes from my time aboard the first ship I was stationed on out of boot camp. I was stationed on that ship for just over 3 years, it was a working class ship affectionately called a “black hull” due to the fact that the ship was painted black instead of the normal white that most of you are used to seeing on the news. This class of ship maintains the aids to navigation markers and buoys that mark the channels, shallow water, dangers to shipping, etc. We “black hull sailors” were a hard-working type that went relatively unknown to most.