Weekend Duty

Weekend duty, I don't know that there are many people who likes standing duty over the weekend, however everyone at the station is on a rotation that requires them to stand 1 weekend out of every 3. Duty weekend starts Friday morning and ends Monday morning, so it can be really taxing on the duty section if they are busy. Here at Ponce it seems our busiest times are during the summer months, and of course during the weekends. Ponce Inlet attracts a wide array of boaters, you have recreational fisherman who are targeting both inshore, and offshore fish, as well as people who are just looking to cruise the waters. The weekend tends to be the busiest for two reasons, the first reason is a no brainier most people are off, so where do you go when you live in Florida and your off, well you hit the water. The second reason is many of the people that hit the water on the weekends are just that weekend boaters. Let me put a disclaimer out there before people get upset (many people who boat on the weekends are very knowledgeable and capable boaters), however there are many people who hit the water on the weekend only a few weekends out of the year and that sometimes creates some issues. Its really important that if you are only able to take the boat out a few weekends a year to take a safety boating class, there are many organizations that provide boating safety classes such as but not limited to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, or Power Squadron.
This weekend was fairly typical at Ponce we had a few calls for assistance and conducted about 15 vessel safety inspections. Sunday afternoon the duty section responded to a call for assistance from a Sailing vessel which had experienced an engine failure. The boat was located about 52 miles from the station, so the boat crew was looking at a long tow back to Ponce Inlet. The crew left the station around 1pm and didn't get back until 11 that evening. Once the crew returned to the station they were "bagged". When we bag a crew it means that they were underway for a extended amount of time and require a certain amount of hours in order to recuperate before they can be launched again. The Coxswain of the 47' MLB which responded to the case was BM3 F. Timmons, a.k.a. "Gil". Gil has been a qualified coxswain for about three months at the unit and has already run dozens of Search and Rescue cases.
All in all it was a good weekend at Ponce Inlet.