UPDATE:
The first of three new fast response Coast Guard cutters arrived in Kodiak on Jan. 28. It was initially scheduled to arrive by the end of the month, according to a status update from the U.S. Coast Guard earlier this month.
USCG lieutenant Jake Daubert, commanding officer of one of the new vessels Frederick Mann, said the John Witherspoon will be the first cutter to arrive at Coast Guard Base Kodiak. He updated members of the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly and City Council during a Fisheries Work Group meeting on Jan. 22.
“And our arrival time frame is one should actually be arriving to town shortly. I believe it's planned by the end of the month, set for commissioning in April, with the next arriving in June, commissioning in August," he said. "And then my cutter [is] arriving [in] October and commissioning in December.”
The three vessels, in order of expected arrival, are the John Witherspoon, the Earl Cunningham and the Frederick Mann.
All three of these vessels were or currently are being 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. That will include Prince William Sound, Seward, Cook Inlet, Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula, Bristol Bay; “all are reasonable locations that we’ll be sent to,” Daubert said.
“Our primary mission will include commercial fishing vessel safety boardings, recreational safety boardings, IFQ halibut and sablefish as our primary, with the introduction of the Fishery Management Plan [FMP] for salmon in Cook Inlet [Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ]," he stated.
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.
Even if the Cutter John Witherspoon does arrive as scheduled by the end of January, it is not set to be officially commissioned until April.
*Editor's Note: This story was updated after the John Witherspoon officially arrived in Kodiak on Jan. 28, 2025.
