When The Weather Is At Its Worst, It's Go Time For Coast Guard Station Brant Point

When bad weather forces the ferries to cancel trips and rough seas send most mariners back on land, that's when it's go time for the men and women of U.S. Coast Guard Station Brant Point.

High winds and big waves mean heavy weather training for the crew aboard the station's two 47-foot motor lifeboats, which are its primary response vessels.

On Monday, Station Brant Point master chief John Lowell invited the Current aboard one of the lifeboats to see firsthand how his crew prepares for search and rescue missions in the waters around Nantucket.

The conditions had to reach a certain threshold first: sustained winds had to be above 30 knots, or buoys had to show eight-foot seas. Both of those conditions were met on Monday as the island was buffeted by strong winds that cancelled the fast ferries.

And so the Current's photographer-at-large Kit Noble joined the crew of Station Brant Point on a blustery training mission outside the harbor, where they conducted several practice tows and other drills to hone their skills and record the necessary training hours toward their certifications. 

"It's extremely important for us," Lowell said of the heavy weather training. "Another great example is when that yacht Wanderlust broke free of its anchor this summer. That was another day where we were out there doing heavy weather training all day, and then we came back, and basically, as we're securing the boats from the training, we get a call to go tow this giant boat Wanderlust off the pier in heavy weather, with the winds about 30 knots. So that's just a great example, and kind of a high-profile one, where the training pays off. There's been plenty of other examples where there's a big, 80-foot steel hull trawler 40 miles offshore that needs a tow in. That's another good example of when we might put the training to use. But certainly in Nantucket, we get winds pretty often. So it's good for us to have that training and proficiency to go out there and do it when we need to."

Almost right on cue, Monday's training turned into a real-world situation.

As the crew was underway, the station received a call about a disabled scallop boat in the harbor. They quickly returned, swapped one of the 47-foot motor lifeboats for a smaller, shallow-water response boat, and located scalloper Frank Dutra to tow his boat safely back to the docks.

"We wound up having to come in for that scalloper and do a real tow, so it was kind of well-timed training," Lowell said.