The first of three new fast response U.S. Coast Guard cutters set to be based in Kodiak arrived on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Coast Guard Lt. Jake Daubert told the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly and City Council that the John Witherspoon was slated to be the first cutter to arrive at Coast Guard Base Kodiak.
After the Witherspoon is commissioned in April, Daubert said, the Earl Cunningham is set to arrive in June and be commissioned in August. Daubert is set to command the third vessel, the Frederick Mann, after it arrives in October and is commissioned in December.
All three of these vessels were built by Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana with funds provided by the Coast Guard’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget from Congress.
The new vessels are meant to replace the few remaining 110-foot Island-class patrol boats, which have been in use since the 1980s. There are currently three of the new cutters already in use across Alaska, but none of them are homeported in Kodiak.
Daubert said the fast response cutters coming to Kodiak will be responsible for a variety of duties across an area that expands west and north from Yakutat. The cutters may be sent as far afield as Prince William Sound, the Alaska Peninsula and Bristol Bay.
“Our primary mission will include commercial fishing vessel safety boardings (and) recreational safety boardings,” Daubert said.
The cutters' other duties, Daubert said, will include enforcement of halibut and sablefish fisheries, as well as the salmon fishery in Cook Inlet's exclusive economic zone.
Daubert added that he expects the cutters will typically be deployed to Cook Inlet in the near future, since there will no longer be an Island class vessel homeported in Homer that is “meant to enforce or respond within Cook Inlet.”
The fast response cutters are also capable of handling search and rescue. But Daubert said their presence in Kodiak likely won’t change how the Coast Guard responds to mariners in distress around the Gulf of Alaska.