Canadian Coast Guard engineer Andrew Prince says he is looking forward to taking the service’s newest search and rescue lifeboat out for sea trials when it arrives at the Sambro station later this month, but there’s one feature he’s not eager to test.
The lifeboats are designed to right themselves if they go over in rough seas, and can even do a complete barrel roll.
Prince said the 21-year-old CCGS Sambro, on which he is an engineer, has the same feature but he’s never experienced a complete flip and hasn’t heard of any of the coast guard’s lifeboats performing it.
But he’s been in rough seas when the water covered the row of windows that circle the Sambro’s cabin. “We have had it over far enough that it’s gone over where there’s water up in those windows, and it came back,” Princesaid.
“Theoretically, the Clark’s Harbour (lifeboat) was rolled while it was being built, and it worked. So basically they put straps underneath it . . . pulled up on the crane and flipped it, and it did go over and come back.
“I’ve never heard of anybody actually flipping one . . . knock on wood. It sounds good in theory to me and that’s as far as I want to take it.”
Prince, a former navy engineer who moved over to the coast guard several years ago, said he can’t imagine working on a ship doing anything other than search and rescue.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “I’m not going to say excitement, because it’s not really excitement.
“It is to a certain extent, I guess, when your pager goes off and you don’t know what’s going to happen, and I guess you always get that little flutter in your stomach. But more or less the sense of somebody relying on me. Basically helping people out.”
The Canadian Coast Guard has ordered 12 new lifeboats at a cost of roughly $90 million. The CCGS Baie de Plaisance, the first one built, was delivered to the Magdalen Islands search and rescue station last month.
On Wednesday, Halifax MP Andy Fillmore announced the name of the second vessel, the CCGS Pennant Bay, which was heading down the St. Lawrence River on its way to the Sambro station from its birthplace at the Hike Metal Factory shop in Wheatley, Ont.
Six are being built there and the other six are under construction at Chantier Naval Forillon Inc. in Gaspé, Que., Fillmore said, speaking on behalf of Fisheries Minister Dominc LeBlanc.
“The whole class of vessels is named after coastal bays in Canada and I’m proud that our beautiful bay just up the coast from here, Pennant Bay, will be one of them,” he said.
“It’s a tribute to our people who go out on the water for a living and also to the beautiful geography in Nova Scotia.”
Wade Spurrell, assistant commissioner for the coast guard’s Atlantic region, said the Pennant Bay will have to undergo sea trials and crew training before the Sambro can be taken out of service.
But at first, the new boat will be stored in Dartmouth while the Sambro wharf is being upgraded.
There’s nothing wrong with the existing vessels, said Spurrell, but they are aging and the new ones are longer — and more importantly wider — and carry more sophisticated equipment and electronics.
They can go out up to 100 nautical miles off the coast and come with no operational limitations, meaning they can handle any weather.
-Tom Ayers
