Rescue Tales of Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City

A tribute to Traverse City’s own defenders of life and law

By Craig Manning | July 3, 2021

The good news is easy to see along the west end of Grand Traverse Bay this week: After the 2020 summer that wasn’t, the National Cherry Festival has made its grand return to Traverse City this summer — as sure a sign as any that life is approaching “normal” again, and that the pandemic is nearly behind us.

The bad news: The uncertainty of a 2021 Cherry Festival meant that organizers had to make some tough calls early on about what they could or could not reasonably plan for, which meant that certain festival fixtures — particularly the Cherry Festival Air Show — won’t be happening this year.

Historically, if there’s been a centerpiece to the Cherry Festival, it might just be the air show. Something about seeing and hearing (and feeling!) a cadre of jets and airplanes fly over Grand Traverse Bay, many exhibiting various acts of extreme death-defying daring, just screams “summer in Traverse City,” and has for many years.

That tradition will be back in 2022. For the first time since 2018, the Blue Angels are scheduled to make their return to the Cherry Festival; they’ll be here July 2­–4, 2022. While you might have to wait a year for a proper Cherry Festival Air Show, that doesn’t mean you can’t catch glimpses of jaw-dropping aerobatic feats right here in northern Michigan. As home to one of two Coast Guard Air Stations situated on the Great Lakes, Traverse City regularly serves as a hub for intrepid rescue missions, Homeland Security matters, and even hurricane responses — all of which put crewmembers up in the air.

In lieu of the 2021 Cherry Festival Air Show that will never be, the Northern Express worked with the Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City to recap some of the scariest, most challenging, and most impressive missions to launch from the local Air Station in recent memory.

FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND
The United States Coast Guard was first established by the U.S. Congress in 1790, at the request of then-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Known at its start as “the Revenue-Marine” — and headed up by Hamilton personally — the branch existed in the early days for one purpose: Collecting customs duties at American seaports. The branch changed its name, to “the Revenue Cutter Service,” in 1894, and in 1915, Congress merged it with the U.S. Life-Saving Service, thus creating the U.S. Coast Guard.

Air Station Traverse City was officially commissioned in November 1945, celebrating its 75th anniversary last year. It is one of two Coast Guard aviation units stationed on the Great Lakes, with the other in located in Detroit. Air Station Detroit handles missions on the eastern portion of the Great Lakes, including Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and part of Lake Huron. Air Station Traverse City flies missions on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and the northern portion of Lake Huron.

According to Brandon Skelly, a Coast Guard lieutenant (junior grade) based at Air Station Traverse City, there are approximately 120 active-duty personnel stationed in Traverse City, “who do everything from fly and maintain the aircraft, to maintaining the buildings and property, ordering parts and supplies, and cooking delicious meals for the crew.” Central to the Air Station’s operations are a trio of Sikorsky MH-60T “Jayhawk” helicopters, which Skelly describes as “a Coast Guard-specific variant of the Army’s Black Hawk.”

What do Air Station Traverse City missions look like? Many, Skelly says, fall into the Coast Guard’s most “well-recognized” mission category, which is search and rescue. In the past year alone, the Air Station Traverse City crew has responded to 120 search and rescue cases — “saving 26 lives and assisting 74 others … But we also conduct law enforcement, border security, and aids-to-navigation missions on a regular basis,” he adds.

THE MACHINES
The Jayhawk helicopters are well-suited to northern Michigan’s harsh winter elements and long spans of open water. According to Skelly, they come equipped with “main rotor and tail rotor blade de-icing capability and engine anti-icing capability, which makes them better suited for the winter environment up here,” as well as “longer fuel endurance and range [than some other Coast Guard helicopters].” At cruise speed, the Jayhawks can travel 125 knots, and can fly for five hours straight without having to refuel.

The copters are also loaded with rescue equipment, ranging from a rescue basket, which can be lowered down from the helicopters so that survivors can climb aboard; to a dewatering pump, which is crucial for missions that involve sinking boats or other vessels that are taking on water.

Perhaps most importantly, the Jayhawks are ready to fly at (almost) a moment’s notice. A duty crew is on site at Air Station Traverse City 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and that crew “will be airborne within 30 minutes” of an alert, Skelly says, “pending any additional flight planning” — due to factors such as weather or the specific challenges of the mission at hand. When a helicopter does need to take off for a mission, it’s typically manned by a crew of four: two pilots, a flight mechanic to operate the rescue hoist, and a rescue swimmer who is also a trained EMT.

THE MISSIONS
So, what types of missions have necessitated an in-the-air response from the Air Station Traverse City team as of late? Here are just a few:

Ice rescue on Sturgeon Bay
What happens when an entire village of ice fishing shanties breaks away from shore and goes for a ride on a gigantic ice floe?

That’s exactly what happened in Sturgeon Bay in Door County, Wisconsin in February.

When the search and rescue alarm went off at Air Station Traverse City on the morning of Feb. 4, reports indicated that 45 ice fishermen were trapped on the ice in the waters of Green Bay, stranded as a winter storm approached. Air Station Traverse City quickly dispatched not one, but two Jayhawk crews to Sturgeon Bay, where the situation proved to be worse than initially reported: The ice floe had drifted nearly two miles from land, there were 66 ice fishermen stranded; 45. Even worse, the ice fishermen were scattered across three different locations, on entirely different ice floes.

As Skelly tells the story, this particular mission required a substantial team approach. In addition to Air Station Traverse City’s two-copter response, Coast Guard Station Sturgeon Bay dispatched its airboats to the scene, and local fire departments and other first responder teams were there to lend a hand as well. While Traverse City’s crews started by lowering rescue swimmers down onto the floes “to start assessing the situation and hoisting the fishermen,” the crews pivoted to a different role once other first responders arrived.

“Since the [Jayhawk] puts down hurricane-force winds, the [Coast Guard Station Sturgeon Bay] boats were a better asset to safely get the survivors off the ice,” Skelly explains. “The last thing our crews want to do is blow a survivor across the slippery ice. The two helicopters remained on scene, vectoring in the airboats to each group of shanties to ensure everyone was accounted for and safely off the ice before the storm rolled in.”

Sinking boat on Grand Traverse Bay
If you were in or around the Grand Traverse Area last summer, it was hard to miss the headline: “32-foot boat sinks in Grand Traverse Bay.” On Friday, June 19, around 2:30pm, a speedboat with 10 people aboard began taking on water. The boat would ultimately sink in 250 feet of water, but there were zero deaths or injuries. That silver lining is in large part because an Air Station Traverse City crew was able to get all 10 people off the vessel and to safety before the boat disappeared beneath the surface — a successful (and speedy) mission that Skelly says was made possible largely due to serendipity.

“For this case, the duty crew was actually conducting a training flight in the local area when they heard the vessel communicating over Channel 16,” Skelly says. “The crew got an accurate position and lowered their rescue swimmer down to assist. The boat sank within nine minutes of the crew arriving on scene, but luckily, there was a Good Samaritan vessel in the area. The swimmer was able to transfer all of the survivors over to the Good Samaritan vessel and ensured that no one was in need of urgent medical care.”

In general, Skelly says the summer can be a busy time of year for local Coast Guard crews, with missions involving everything from boats in distress to injured hikers. While boats actually sinking in Grand Traverse Bay isn’t a common occurrence, Skelly cautions locals to be prepared for anything when they head out on the water.

“This case definitely highlighted the importance of life-jacket usage,” Skelly says. “Emergencies can happen quickly on the water, and this case could have turned out much differently.”

Another piece of good news surrounding this particular case? Last September, a team of local divers was able to recover the 32-foot boat from the bottom of the bay, removing it — and potential pollution risks — from the water for good.

Canadian kayaker rescue
The crews at Air Station Traverse City aren’t just responsible for monitoring local waters, or even just watching domestic waters. On the contrary, Skelly says the Coast Guard crews that reside in the area are also charged with regularly patrolling the border between the United States. Those stationed locally even train with the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and provincial police to ensure an effective coordinated response. From Pictured Rocks to the Soo Locks, those missions regularly take Air Station Traverse City crew members to some notable locales.

In May 2020, this United States/Canada collaboration resulted in Air Station Traverse City getting a call to assist with a rescue in Georgian Bay — part of Lake Huron that sits just over the Canadian border in the province of Ontario. Why? Because, as Skelly says, “Search and rescue is everyone’s business.”

The rescue involved a hypothermic kayaker, who had managed to make it to shore after spending two hours in the frigid Georgian Bay waters. The kayaker survived that part of the ordeal — due in large part because he was wearing a life jacket and a wetsuit — but he wasn’t out of the proverbial and literal woods yet. When Canadian first responders reached the scene, they were unable to move the kayaker and get him to a higher level of medical care, due to challenges posed by the navigability of the rocky and forested terrain. It was an Air Station Traverse City Jayhawk that allowed rescuers to hoist the kayaker off the shoreline and transport him to a local hospital.

Lighting the way on the Great Lakes
One specific type of Coast Guard unit is an Aids to Navigation Team (ANT), responsible for servicing buoys, day boards, lighthouses, light stations, and other key navigation markets throughout the Great Lakes.

While not nearly as dramatic as search and rescue missions, ANT missions are crucial for protecting life on the waters around Michigan. ANT missions are also work that needs to be done on a surprisingly regular basis. Just recently, Skelly says Traverse City-based ANT teams have had to service lights at the Lansing Shoal Light (located near Beaver Island), the Isle Royale Light (found on Menagerie Island in Lake Superior), and Stannard Rock Lighthouse (another Lake Superior light that, thanks to its status as the North American lighthouse situated farthest from land, is sometimes referred to as “the loneliest place in North America”).

“Some of the remote lighthouses in the Great Lakes are only accessible via helicopter hoist — especially if the weather conditions are too rough for the specialized boats that the ANT teams use,” Skelly said. “If a lighthouse needs new batteries or other repairs, the Air Station will partner with the Coast Guard navigation team to hoist their members and equipment down to the light to service it.”

“For some of these missions, the helicopter can land nearby to let the members walk to the lighthouse,” he adds. “For others, such as Stannard Rock and Lansing Shoal, the helicopter needs to hover with the rotor arc above the top of the lighthouse itself, while the flight mechanic lowers the ANT team members onto the small platform below. Once they fix whatever needed to be fixed, the helicopter will move into position to hoist them back up to the aircraft.”

BEYOND THE GREAT LAKES
Clearly, Coast Guard crews with a helicopter and a hoist are more dynamic than you might have initially thought. Beyond the above stories and examples, Skelly says Air Station Traverse City crews are sometimes deployed to the Gulf Coast to assist with hurricane disasters, are trained to handle “vertical surface” search and rescue missions (such as getting climbers off the sides of cliffs or large dunes), and are sent out to Great Lakes freighters to do medical evacuations in the event of injury or illness. Local Coast Guard servicemen and women are even trained in “urban search and rescue,” which could entail hoisting people out of building windows in the event of a disaster.

It’s all hard work, Skelly says, and all made easier when the people in need of rescue or assistance are prepared themselves.

“Life-jacket usage, dressing for the water temperature, checking the weather frequently, and having a reliable means of communication in an emergency are all incredibly important,” Skelly says. “We’ve seen it happen time and time again, where someone’s life jacket or wetsuit saved their life.”