A U.S. Coast Guard cutter returned to its Port Angeles, Washington, homeport on Friday after plucking very different items from the middle of the Pacific Ocean during its 54-day sailing.
On April 19, the ship recovered $50 million worth of cocaine while patrolling off the coast of Mexico.
A week earlier, it had rescued a lone sailor left adrift after an unfortunate meeting with a whale on the high seas.
The cutter, called the Active, routinely patrols against drug smuggling off the coasts of Central and South America. Following an hour-long high-speed chase about 500 miles south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the Active’s helicopter shot out the engines of a speedboat attempting to deliver 1.9 tons of cocaine from Ecuador.
Operations officer Lt. Erick Jackson said the helicopter had spotted two pangas— small, low-riding boats, each with three outboard motors for speed —signaling each other just after dawn.
“Knowing that we were in a spot that typically sees a lot of drug smuggling, we immediately launched our two ‘interceptor’ small boats with law enforcement teams on each boat,” Jackson said.
The pangas, able to hit speeds of about 45 miles per hour, fled.
The Coast Guard boats pursued, broadcasting loud warnings for the pangas to stop: “¡Alto su barco! ¡Guardacostas Estados Unidos, alto su barco!”
“We conducted warning shots from the surface assets and disabling fire from a precision marksman that is stationed on the helicopter, who physically shot the engines out in one of the vessels, and the other became compliant after the warning shots,” Jackson said.
Six alleged smugglers, two from Ecuador and four from Mexico, were arrested.
A Coast Guard spokesperson said the cocaine was densely packed in cubes of black plastic and burlap, about the size of three large refrigerators when all stacked together
Source: https://www.kuow.org/stories/19-tons-of-cocaine-1-whale-stranded-sailor-coast-guard-cutter-s-haul
