Caribbean Patrol!

So, we're coming to the end of our summer patrol around the Caribbean on the beautiful 210' WMEC USCGC VIGILANT! Done a lot during this month, starting with meeting my cutter in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since then we've done helo ops literally every night except for two this month. Basically we've been having HH-65's (Dolphins, smaller helos) landing on our tiny flight deck during sunset so that the pilots at Sector San Juan, Puerto Rico, can keep their quals up to date. Last week we had a port call in St. Thomas, USVI, where the Commandant of the Coast Guard and the Master Chief Petty Officer of the CG came aboard our boat to meet the crew.

Since then we've moved up north. We're currently holding nearly 20 Cuban migrants on our flight deck under a make shift tent (that kinda put an end to landing helos on the flight deck....). We put up red Christmas lights in their tent yesterday night so that the migrant security watch could have some lighting that wouldn't interfere with night time ship light signals, and the migrants started singing "Feliz Navidad". We should be coming back home from a long patrol later this week. I'm acutally homesick for my new home in sunny Florida!