VER THE PAST TWO YEARS
the 1SR food service
team has been working aggressively to build capacity and fill the needs of our active duty counterparts. One of the big gaps has been afloat support, for those ships that perform the essential ATON and coastal icebreaking missions. The Culinary Specialist (CS) petty officers are cooking three hot meals a day, often alone or with just one other CS on board. They also have to do other jobs as well on the ship, including standing watches. It’s one of the more challenging jobs in the Coast Guard to be a CS petty officer.
For units with only one CS assigned it is difficult to take leave for critical family and personal needs and on cutters with two that means that one chef is left with a heavy
workload that starts in the dark before the sun comes up and that goes on into the evening. An extra set of trained hands makes all the difference.
A significant emphasis was put on training people to work on ships, especially the Keeper class and Bay class ships that perform so much of the work in our AOR. Fortunately Katherine Walker, Sturgeon Bay and
Penobscot Bay were outstanding in making their galleys available for training. Working with the command
O
SUPPORT
AFLOAT
John Gallagher preparing one of the entries for graduates.