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Around 250 U.S. Coast Guard crew members stationed across Alaska and the Pacific Northwest spent last week in Juneau to train and compete in games called the Buoy Tender Olympics on Wednesday.
On the cutter Fir, anchored at the Coast Guard dock downtown, teams of four competed in the final game, called the “heat and beat.” It’s a fast-paced metal forging contest.
First, one crew member torched a cylinder of steel sticking through a large shackle until it’s glowing orange.
“Then you’re gonna have two guys hit it with the sledges. Try and get it as flat as possible,” said Samuel Heilig, a first class Coast Guard damage controlman on the Cypress.
He’s been stationed in Kodiak for the past four years and said this is his first time competing in the games.
“Then once you get it as flat as possible, that’s where I came in with the smaller hammer, which is just called peening. I’m just trying to smooth out the shackle or the pin until it’s nice and round and smooth,” he said.
The winner, Heilig said, is whichever team is the quickest and makes the smoothest shackle pin.
He said this is an activity the coast guard does frequently as part of regular buoy maintenance, but usually not as a competition. A shackle connects a buoy to its mooring chain.
“Sometimes we have to swap out buoys that are just old, damaged, not working properly, and then sometimes we have to just go out and put a buoy in its place because it was lost,” Heilig said.
Ashly Murphy is a public affairs specialist with the Coast Guard in Juneau. She said the heat and beat is the most popular event of the day. Earlier, there was a line throwing contest, a tug of war competition, and chain pulling competition.
“Whoever was the fastest and had the most aesthetically pleasing flaked-out line won that one,” Murphy said of the chain pulling game.
She said Alaska-based crews maintain about 1,350 maritime navigational aids — like buoys and lighthouses — across the state’s massive coastline, which is longer than all other coastal U.S. states combined.
Murphy said seven Coast Guard cutters joined the training week, including two from the Seattle area. Most left Juneau on Friday.
