The Australian Volunteer Coast Guard Association Inc.
Profile 1978 - U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary
| U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Department of Public Affairs |
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Profile - 1978
U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary |
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| The following is an updated brief summary
profile and background of the Auxiliary Intended for public relations application and development. It provides factual material for use vis. press and broadcast media, speeches and all other means of acquainting the public with Auxiliary objectives, activities and accomplishments. It may be reproduced in whole or in part, and in combination with District, Division or Flotilla achievements. |
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| Around the nation's waterfronts one often
hears it said that the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is the Coast Guard's
most valuable asset in promoting safe pleasure boating. For skippers who have been helped out of distress on the water by Auxiliary crews. or learned boat handling skills in an Auxiliary public boating course . or had their vessel's safety factors checked free by the Auxiliary's volunteer examiners . will quarrel with that appraisal. Since 1939 when the Congress enacted a law establishing the Coast Guard Auxiliary-this dedicated, volunteer organisation of 43,000 men and women has distinguished itself in times of both war and peace as a member of the Coast Guard family. As the civilian component of the parent service, the Auxiliary is the only boating organisation with such official origin and charter. It wears uniforms much like the regular Coast Guard and the Blue Ensign flies on its vessels. The Auxiliary represents an excellent example of the American tradition of volunteer effort. From the early days of active war-time sentry duty both afloat and ashore, the Auxiliary's emphasis shifted over the years as the popularity of boating zoomed upward. Coast Guard saw the urgent need for improving boating skills, efficiency and safety among the nation's private boat owners. and the Coast Guard Auxiliary has provided the answer. It has mounted over the years a broad program of public boating education, courtesy marine exams and operational activity, with results that Coast Guard executives say are out of all proportion to the number of Auxiliarists. New performances records each year attest to the Auxiliary's major impact on safety afloat. For example, achievements in 1977 include: |
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| The Auxiliary perhaps is best known for
safe boating education programs in its own classrooms and those carried
into schools with courses for students from kindergarten to college. Since 582,o000 students enrolled in Auxiliary instruction in 1977, bringing to more than 3 million the number of Auxiliary boating class enrollees since 1969. Currently the Auxiliary is training more novices in the principles and techniques of boating safety than any other organisation in the world. As a further contribution to safety on the water, Auxiliary courtesy examiners conducted a new record of 352,756 marine exams in 1977. In the past eight years these examiners have checked safety equipment on 2.3 million recreational vessels. In their operational services for the Coast Guard, Auxiliary men and women volunteer their own facilities and their time for search and rescue missions and various patrols. They are called upon night and day for help with emergencies on the water, and also for assistance in time of natural disasters, floods, storms and other community crises. The Auxiliary made available to the Coast Guard in 1977 some 14,300 member-owned facilities including vessels, aircraft and radio stations plus untold thousands of volunteer hours to operate them. Faced with today's dramatic increase in boating as a pastime, the Coast Guard looks to the Auxiliary to keep pace with a stepped-up educational and courtesy exam program. With 53.8 million people now engaged in recreational boating, the scope of the boating safety problem comes clear. In their efforts to attract more novice skippers to their boating classes, Auxiliarists know from experience that they reach only a token number. It is a sobering fact that only some 20 per cent of boat people on the nation's waterways have ever taken the time to acquire even basic boat-handling know-how. Equally sobering is the fact that most mishaps on the water are caused by faulty boat handling at the hands of inexperienced skippers, with most fatalities due to capsizing, falls overboard and collisions. In its message to the inexperienced, the Coast Guard Auxiliary stresses that a few hours in a boating class can help overcome lack of training as such basics of boating as navigational aids, rules of the road, distress signals, personal flotation devices, ignorance of the law, proper loading, fueling precautions and so on. Among the Auxiliary's other support programs for the parent Coast Guard is assistance in the procurement of qualified officers and enlisted personnel for the regular service. The Auxiliary also is active in waterfront surveys that help provide data for nautical chart updating and revision carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Survey. (NOS). Among its many signal accomplishments, the Auxiliary was the founder of National Safe Boating Week and today is one of the prime factors in the National Safe Boating Council. Membership in the Auxiliary is open to all citizens of the United States and its territories and possessions, 17 years or older, who either own a facility or have a special talent or skill or experience useful in the boating safety field. The Auxiliary welcomes new members with an active interest in boating and a desire to share knowledge with fellow boaters. |
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RL.aH/18678 |
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