PORT ANGELES — The Coast Guard will celebrate a new cutter support building and small boat pier at its Ediz Hook station this week.
City officials have been invited to a short ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning, followed by a demonstration of the new response boats.
The new building is a land office to support Group/Air Station Port Angeles’ cutter fleet and is the site of their supply department, Lt. Cmdr. Jim Finta said.
The 87-foot cutters Adelie and Wahoo, the 110-foot cutter Cuttyhunk and the 210-foot cutter Active are all based in Port Angeles.
The new pier houses two fast rescue and intercept boats that Station Port Angeles, the newly formed small boat station on Ediz Hook, received in the past seven months.
‘Safe’ boats
The 25-foot response boats, called “safe” boats (an acronym for safe all-around foam encapsulated), are Defender Class boats produced by SAFE Boats International of Port Orchard.
The Coast Guard last year agreed to purchase up to 700 of the boats at $180,000 each to standardize its response boat fleet and replace nearly 300 non-standard shore-based boats.
“They’re just the cat’s meow,” Senior Chief Boatswain’s Mate Tom Johnson, officer in charge of Station Port Angeles, said Friday.
