Passing the Boat Haven at night, it’s easy for the untrained eye to think this complicated top-mast carries the rig of a traditional sailing ship. Walk closer and you’ll see it’s …
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Passing the Boat Haven at night, it’s easy for the untrained eye to think this complicated top-mast carries the rig of a traditional sailing ship. Walk closer and you’ll see it’s the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Osprey, an 87-footer.
Built in Lockport, Louisiana, it was the first of the bigger class of cutters to arrive in the Northwest, commissioned at Union Wharf Pier in Port Townsend on June 19, 1999.
The aluminum superstructure and steel hull were designed to handle 8-foot seas. Below-decks, it was designed to handle the increasingly mixed-gender crews of the Coast Guard. Osprey accommodates a 10-person crew and features a stern launch and recovery system for a dieseal-powered jet boat for use in rescue and other operations.
The pilothouse, which the Coast Guard describes as “vastly larger” than the 82-footers it replaced, includes an electronic chart system, which links up with the Coast Guard’s surface search radar. Osprey has been involved in a number of operations, perhaps most notably the seizure in 2000 of 2.5 tons of cocaine from the motor vessel Western Wind.
