Drug Interdiction
On average, the U.S. Coast Guard boards 193 boats at sea and seizes over 1000 pounds of illegal drugs each day. That's quite a lot of drugs that are never making their way to the streets of America, keeping our country that much safer from the scourge of illegal narcotics!
Throughout my career, this has been the most rewarding mission that I have been involved in. I was a Boarding Officer for the U.S. Coast Guard for four and a half years, and during that time, I seized a total of 25 tons of cocaine, valued at over one billion dollars. My first two Coast Guard Cutters that I was stationed on were the USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC-719) homeported in Alameda, California, and the USCGC HAMILTON (WHEC-715) homeported in San Diego, California. On each of these ships, I made numerous 90 day patrols off the coast of Central and South America, intercepting drug smuggling vessels. Sometimes, these were foreign fishing vessels, which were slow moving, but had the advantage of carrying in excess of 4 tons of cocaine in hidden compartments. My favorite and most exciting boardings were when we would chase high powered speedboats commonly referred to as go-fasts. These vessels carried up to around two tons of cocaine at a time, and travelled in excess of 35 knots (quite fast out on the ocean). Stopping a non-compliant vessel and hopping onboard, gun drawn, was extremely exciting.
Now that I'm getting more senior (and older) in the organization, I am not doing the boardings anymore. Instead, for example, I just recently commanded my own Coast Guard Cutter, USCGC ASSATEAGUE (WPB-1337) over in Guam from August 2006 to May 2008.