Coast Guard budget cuts
The incidents recall a December 2007 incident in which the Coast Guard's oldest ship, the Cutter Acushnet, dropped a propeller and shaft at sea because of corrosion. The Acushnet is to be retired in 2011 after entering Navy service as a salvage ship in 1944; it saw action in the Pacific theater at Iwo Jima and Okinawa before being transferred to the Coast Guard in 1946.
I above should not be a Coast Guard asset but a museum
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021104796.html
Of all the Government agency's out there the tax payer gets more bang for there buck out of the Coast Guard than any of them
There is right at 38,000 serving in the NYPD. There is right at 41.000 serving in the Coast Guard Protecting our coast and conducting patrols in the Persian gulf
BTW one of the ships that broke down during the Haitian relief efforts is at North Florida ship yard over by the stadium being repaired
Here is a couple of sayings that we use to live by
We have gone for so long with so little that we can do peculiarly anything with nothing at all.
You Have to go out but you don't have to come back.
I guess the new up and coming coasties will have to relearn them