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Sunday, November 20, 2005 10:39 AM
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News Release
| Auxiliarist's Trek to Teach Safe Boating Course Becomes 'Trial by Fire' |
Date:
Contact: Aux. Wayne Spivak |
When U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliarist Dean Terencio received a request to teach a safe boating course to the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association earlier this month, he was not expecting a trial by fire.
The fisheries association had asked for the course to be held in a mobile classroom at their training camp, downstream from the town of Eagle, Alaska, about 30 miles west of the Canadian border. To get there, the Anchorage-based Terencio, who is the District 17staff officer for Public Education, would have to fly on a commercial Boeing 737 to Fairbanks and then transfer to a small six-passenger Piper for the flight to Eagle. Then it would be on to a 16-foot alumaweld river boat for a 12-mile trip downstream on the Yukon River. 
"My first attempt on Monday to fly from Fairbanks to Eagle was aborted due to the thickness of smoke from local forest fires," Terencio recalls.
S
o he returned to Fairbanks but was unable to find a hotel room because it was the tourist season. That forced Terencio to return by jet to Anchorage. The following day, Tuesday, he was able to fly to Fairbanks, then to Eagle and, finally, he was able to take the boat to the training camp on the Yukon River.
"I taught the Boating Safety Course to the trainees all day Wednesday and was scheduled to depart Eagle on Thursday. However, again, because of smoke, no planes were flying Thursday or Friday," says Terencio. "I was fortunate to connect with a tour bus traveling to Fairbanks and hopped aboard." 
After a ten-hour bus ride which took the passengers through the forest fire area, Terencio reached Fairbanks around 11:30 PM Friday.
"I was fortunate to find a room for the night and caught the Saturday 8:30 AM flight back to Anchorage," says Terencio, who is also a Branch Assistant on the Auxiliary's National Public Education staff.
Thus ended Terencio's six-day odyssey, all to teach a single boating safety course as a volunteer in the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
"This shows how far our Public Education Department will go to teach a class," says T. Doug Bomeisler, the national Branch Chief of the Auxiliary's Public Education Hotline.
The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary is composed of uniformed, non-military volunteer's who assist the Coast Guard in all of its varied missions, except for military and direct law enforcement. These men and women can be found on the nation's waterways, in the air, in classrooms and on the dock, performing Maritime Domain Awareness patrols, safety patrols, vessel safety checks and public education. The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary was founded in 1939 by an Act of Congress as the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve and re-designated as the Auxiliary in 1941. Its 30,000 members donate millions of hours annually in support of Coast Guard missions. For more information on the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, visit us at www.cgaux.org. ### |
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