The Honolulu-based Coast Guard cutter Sherman returned Thursday after making a big drug haul off Central and South America, seizing more than 13,730 pounds
of cocaine worth over $205.9 million, according to the service.
That’s with a ship that’s
49 years old. The future of the Coast Guard in Honolulu is on display at Aloha Tower in the cutter Munro, a new Legend-class “national security cutter” which is expected to be commissioned Sept. 1 in Seattle and is based in Alameda, Calif.
The 418-foot Munro, delivered in Pascagoula, Miss., in mid-December and making a port visit to Honolulu, will be open to the public today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The nine national security cutters being built are the “centerpiece” of the Coast Guard fleet, “capable of executing the most challenging operations, including supporting maritime homeland security and defense missions,” the sea service said.
The seventh such cutter, Kimball, is on track for delivery to Honolulu in 2018, while the eighth, the Midgett, is scheduled to be operating out of Hawaii in 2019.
The new cutters are replacing aging 378-foot, high-endurance cutters that have been in service since the 1960s.
“Compared to legacy cutters, the NSC’s design provides better sea-keeping and higher sustained transit speeds, greater endurance and range, and the ability to launch and recover small boats from astern, as well as aviation support facilities and a flight deck for helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles,” the Coast Guard said on its website.
The Sherman, launched in 1968, was sent to Honolulu in 2015 to replace the retiring cutter Rush, which was just as old. Both the Rush and another old Hawaii-based cutter, Jarvis, were transferred to Bangladesh.
The crew of the Sherman spent 92 days on deployment, interdicting nine suspected smuggling vessels and detaining more than two dozen people who will be tried in the United States, the Coast Guard’s 14th District said. The ship’s crew also treated a fisherman off the Galapagos Islands who had been wounded by a stingray a few days earlier.
“The wound showed early symptoms of infection in a remote area hundreds of miles away from advanced medical care,” the Coast Guard said in a release. “The cutter’s corpsman, Chief Petty Officer Ky Le, cleaned the wound and provided the injured man antibiotics.”
Cmdr. Jerome Dubay, the Sherman’s executive officer, noted the cutter will be a half-century old next year.
“This is a 50-year-old ship in theater doing the job, executing the mission,” he said in the release. “Sure the cutter still has the look and feel of the era it was built, but the crew keeps the equipment working (and) we are very successful in our ability to conduct the job we are sent here to do.”
The Coast Guard said it set a record for illegal drug removal by interdicting more than 443,000 pounds of cocaine in fiscal 2016, which ended Sept. 30.
Nine national security cutters are replacing 12 of the old high-endurance cutters. The Trump administration wants to cut the ninth cutter as part of a proposal to remove $1.3 billion from the Coast Guard’s $9.1 billion budget — something many lawmakers have vowed to oppose.