Probably selected by the Webmaster's sister in memory of my years in the Coast Guard (radioman second class); I served on a ship like one of the two on the left (a 378-foot "high endurance cutter," the USCGC Munro, WHEC-724). Built in the mid-1960s to late 1970s for ocean station service, oceanography and search and rescue, they are powered by a pair of jet turbine engines (on which they can streak to 29 knots) as well as conventional twin Diesel powerplants. The ship on the right is the Coast Guard Academy's cadet training barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327); a four-masted square-rigger, it is today the United States' only active commissioned sailing vessel. Five of these were built in the 1930s in Germany for training; this one, christened the Horst Wessel, was seized as a prize of war after Germany's defeat.
Once around twenty years ago (which looks about when this photo was taken), my ship called for liberty in San Francisco on our way down to San Diego for a couple months' regular training exercises with the Navy. (The Gate is a narrow passage with which we were unfamiliar, and on our way in the quartermasters were alert and the bridge was quiet.) I went to visit my family in Sonoma County. On my way back across the bridge riding a Golden Gate Transit, I looked down and to my amazement saw a "378" passing just beneath us on its way out to sea. "Holy cow," I thought, "They weren't supposed to leave until 6 o'clock." It would have been awkward but not difficult to hop a plane and meet them in San Diego, but Coast Guard vessels often get underway on short notice for rescue calls, and I knew my chief and the captain would not be happy about making a distress run without one of their senior radio operators and who knows how long such a mission could take. Fortunately, it was another (virtually identical) 378 I saw, which I was not aware had put in to SF briefly, and I made it for my ship's departure in good time.
Jeffrey Kopp
