Training in Treacherous Waters
Embedded with the USCG National Motor Lifeboat School
I really respect the servicemen and women in all our military branches, but as a boater the United States Coast Guard (USCG) is special to me. I first started running charter boats and doing deliveries when I was 23 years old and have maintained a USCG masters license ever since. I feel lucky because even after many years of boating, I haven’t needed to be rescued by the USCG, and I hope I never do. My interactions with the USCG over the years, including routine boardings, communications, and exchanges, have all been professional and positive. When a chance to visit the USCG National Motor Lifeboat School (NMLBS) came up as part of a documentary I was working on, I was excited to find out more and speak to those whose job sometimes put them in harm’s way so that they can help boaters in distress.
The USCG National Motor Lifeboat School
We all know that part of the USCG’s mission is to assist mariners when things go wrong. Rescues in dire situations require specialized equipment, procedures, and training. Being able to perform in extreme conditions is fundamental to the mission readiness the USCG needs to operate safely in dangerous circumstances. The National Motor Lifeboat School (NMLBS) was created in 1968 to help the Coast Guard train and prepare their personnel for critical rescue actions. The Coast Guard identified a need to develop a standard of operations for the lifeboat community that required a practice area that could expose their men to all types of conditions.
They created the school in Ilwaco, Washington, at the mouth of the Columbia River primarily because this area has a wide variety of training zones and the severe conditions needed to test the equipment and the mettle of their operators, who are seeking to become certified as Surfman. Known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific” for good reason, the Columbia River bar presents unique qualities that create some of the most treacherous marine environments available.
The River
The Columbia stretches from the Washington-Oregon border 1,243 miles to its headwaters in Canada. River volumes vary by season, but at the mouth of the river, the Columbia delivers into the Pacific Ocean an astonishing average flow of 265,000 cubic feet per second (7,500 cubic meters per second). The mouth of the river stretches 3.5 miles wide between the heads, and the main channel is a mile wide. The debris-strewn delta pushes sediments five miles into the ocean before they drop into the 1,500+ depths of the Astoria Canyon.
Tides along Cape Disappointment typically run around six feet, and tidal flows reach 80 miles upriver to the Willamette junction near Portland, Oregon, and beyond. Currents at the mouth can run five knots when the tide flows with the river. The effects can be astronomical when this massive volume of water meets Pacific swells rolling up on the river delta’s shoals. Wave periods become short as ocean swells pile up on the shore and are forced even higher by the counter currents. Crossing the bar even in mild conditions can be challenging. Ships of all sizes have foundered here for hundreds of years. The river’s unique geography and adverse conditions create an ideal proving ground for the USCG to train their personnel in a real-world setting.
The Courses
My colleagues and I arrived and were welcomed to the USCG National Lifeboat School for a tour and a chance to see their boats in action. BMCS Senior Chief Trevor Armstrong, Executive Petty Officer showed us the facility and explained their mission and training methods.
“Our goal is to create the best boat operators in the Coast Guard by exposing them to the worst possible conditions,” said Armstrong.
At the school, they run three different tiers of courses: basic operator, heavy weather, and the surf course. Each course is four weeks long and typically consists of 12 students. The courses include some classroom work but primarily focus on hands-on operation and training using four of the six 47′ Motor Lifeboats stationed at the school. They place three students on each boat, along with an instructor, an engineer, and a crewman.
Armstrong showed us around their classroom facilities and explained about the different courses, “Basic operator is a course on fundamentals. We’re not looking to get them in bad weather. We just want them to get the essential skills and learn how to drive the boats.”
In the heavy weather course, instructors want cadets to operate in big swells and heavy winds. “We’re looking for up to 20′ swells and 50 knots of wind, which we want to expose them to as much as we can,” explained Armstrong. Students in the heavy weather course come from a designated heavy weather unit or a surf unit. They have to be a boat driver who wants to go in the direction of heavy weather or surf. “We’re trying to get the students in the worst weather possible to expose them to the fundamentals and operating life in these severe conditions. We go over how to tow boats, approach a vessel, pass dewatering pumps and other gear, pick up people from the water, and do other essential operational tasks.”
At the top of the tiers is the surf course that is critical for the USCG as it trains Surfmen who must operate in the most extreme conditions. In order to get into the surf course, students have to be at a designated surf unit and have passed both the basic and heavy weather courses. It is a limited pool as there are only 18 surf stations in the USCG, and most of them are on the West Coast. Becoming a Surfman is a prestigious and difficult milestone to achieve. “We usually do one or two surf classes per year,” said Armstrong. “We get students directly into breaking surf and show them techniques and the foundations of driving boats in breaking waters.”
Passing the course alone doesn’t automatically qualify graduates as Surfmen. The students have to return to their unit at the station they’re attached to and show the commanding officer that they’re capable and able to make appropriate decisions and have the confidence and skills to be a Surfman.
While standing in front of a wall of brass checks in the entryway to the Surf School, Armstrong explained, “It can take up to six years to qualify as a Surfman after you first step on one of these boats. When you do qualify as a Surfman, you get issued a Surfman check, a brass check, it’s got your Surfman number on it.” Every Surfman that gets qualified receives a number associated with them. “Their numbers are recorded in the Surfman registry, and they wear a pin to signify the importance of this qualification, a milestone in someone’s operating career, and to acknowledge their accomplishments.”
This extensive training is necessary so that boat drivers have the skills and experience to conduct operations even in horrific conditions. This ensures that they can be ready to operate even when the weather gets bad, as is often the case when rescues are needed.
The school is operated at the mouth of the Columbia River adjacent to the USCG station. According to Armstrong, the mission of the lifeboat school is purely for instructing. Still, the school will conduct search and rescue operations when a vessel is in distress close enough for them to be effective. They don’t focus on law enforcement or search and rescue for the most part, as that is the adjacent USCG station’s responsibility. The station typically operates two 47′ Motor Lifeboats in the area for those purposes. The station also monitors and sets restrictions on the bar. Bar restrictions help boaters understand when it is safe to go over the bar and help prevent problems.
The Boats
After we finished touring the school, we walked down to the docks to see the boats and go for a ride. The heart of the Surf School is the 47′ Motor Lifeboat. These vessels were first put into service in 1997. With thousands of rescues performed successfully, even in some of the most dire circumstances, the vessels have proven to be excellent surf boats. The 47′ Motor Lifeboat is rated to operate in 50 knots of wind, 30′ seas, and 20′ surf. The “lifeboat” designation means they are designed to re-right even when knocked down or rolled 360 degrees.
They are rugged looking boats made completely of aluminum. A steering station, controls, and shock-absorbing seats spread across the upper deck. There is also an interior fully enclosed pilothouse reached through watertight doors. Inside, there are machinery spaces but also first aid equipment and room to transport and treat injured victims that have been rescued inside the climate controlled sealed cabin. The aft deck has a large towing bollard and winch with towrope on it. Both sides of the vessels have folding grates that create a deck to move forward, but they can also be lifted up, allowing for easy access to the water for bringing in swimmers or rescuing people from smaller boats alongside.
The original 47′ Motor Lifeboats were built by Textron Marine in New Orleans, Louisiana, and 117 MLBs were placed in service on the Great Lakes and the northern areas of the East and West Coast between 1997 to 2003. At 25 years old, these vessels are nearing the end of their service life. Typically, when a vessel is ready to be phased out, the USCG requests bids for an all-new replacement vessel. Because of the 47 MLBs exceptional service record and unique capabilities, the USCG made the unusual decision to keep the original vessels, albeit after conducting major refit work on them.
In 2019, the USCG awarded Birdon America Inc. the contract to conduct the 47′ Motor Lifeboat Service Life Extension Program (MLB-SLEP) project. This program would take the existing 47′ Motor Lifeboats, strip them bare, replate any aluminum that needed replacement, and rebuild them with all new engines, electronics, and more. This program is currently underway and Best4Boats will follow up with another story that explains the Motor Lifeboat Service Life Extension Program (MLB-SLEP) in more detail.
General specifications for USCG 47′ Motor Lifeboat
| Length | 47′, 11″ overall |
| Beam | 15′ overall |
| Draft | 4′, 6″ |
| Range | 200 nm at 20 knots sustained |
| Max Speed | 25 knots |
Stability: withstand flooding of any two compartments
Self-Righting: in damaged condition with either an enclosed bridge or survivor’s compartment-free flooding
The Action
As we got underway, Armstrong answered questions and told us about his experiences with the lifeboats, “We never try to capsize a boat intentionally. We don’t want that to happen because of potential injuries or overall safety and also because the boat itself can get damaged, but it can happen. Our training is to show the students how to operate the boat without getting to that point.”
When asked if he had rolled one of the boats, he said that he had not experienced a rollover but had been knocked down. “If you go past 90°, it’s a knockdown. The righting arm on the boat is 70° to 110°, so if you get to 70°, it will probably go past that, but it will likely come back the same way. If you get to 110°, it is most likely going to go all the way around. To get to that 110° is difficult. It is a super buoyant boat with seven main watertight compartments. There is also a buoyancy chamber up higher on the boat, and when that hits the water, it really wants to spring back the same way it came.”
“It takes a lot of force to get a boat to go all the way around,” Armstong explained that he saw it happen while he was a student in Surf School, “It was terrifying because when the boat re-rights almost every single time it’s facing the beach.” All the weight is aft, so the wave hits the boat and as it rolls, the bow is pushed forward by the force of the wave. The stern is now exposed to the ocean. To the power. “You actually have to reverse back through the next few swells and sometimes they are breaking. The whole time you’re trying to gather yourself, make sure no one is hurt and there’s nothing in the water.”
After the boat rolled, the crew managed to back out of the surf on their own power. When Armstrong approached the boat to try to tow it back, he thought it was on fire. “We did not know it at the time, but the fire extinguishers came off the bulkheads and exploded inside the cabin and there was CO2 coming out of the vents that looked like smoke. We talked to the crew and got everything under control and rigged the boat to tow it back.”
As they started towing, Armstrong was looking back at this boat and all the rub-rails were broken off, the radar had completely exploded, all the antennas were bent, and the chairs were folded flat.
“A couple of people on the boat had some injuries but were lucky they weren’t too severe,” said Armstrong. “I was sitting there as a young boat driver, hopefully making Surfman soon, and I was looking back at that boat that had been battered by but survived the surf, and I could not help thinking about the power of the ocean and understanding that it’s dangerous.”
Out on the Columbia River on a calm and sunny day, I tried to imagine one of these rugged boats being bashed by the waves and thrust toward the beach. We were practicing towing by throwing a line from the stern of one boat to the bow of the other and then rigging up and making fast the tow lines. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, even in good weather. Armstrong’s story made me realize the importance of the training and preparation needed to successfully perform rescue operations in all conditions.
Aboard the 47 Motor Lifeboat, I watched the careful regiment of their training. Practice and repetition allow rescue procedures to become routine so they can be performed no matter the circumstances. This dedication to training ensures the USCG is ready to handle any situation that comes up. I was proud to see these first responders in action. Watching the training showed me the dedication, hard work, and rigorous preparation needed for the USCG to help boaters in dire situations and save lives. It also made me want to prepare my own boat better to avoid ever having to call on their services.
