USCGC Walnut arrives to new homeport in Pensacola

The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Walnut arrived at the cutter’s new homeport in Pensacola Wednesday after an extensive dry-dock period.

The Walnut crew performed a major maintenance availability project to enable the 225-foot cutter to reach the end of its 30-year planned life service.

“The Walnut crew looks forward to our arrival in Pensacola, Florida, and values our role in supporting Coast Guard District Eight’s continued efforts to maintain a safe and effective maritime transportation system,” said Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Bonner, commanding officer of Coast Guard Cutter Walnut. “As evidenced by the historic hurricane season of 2020, the Coast Guard and its buoy tender fleet played and will continue to play a critical role in responding to devastating natural disasters and reconstituting waterways in and around this nation’s most critical maritime ports.”

The dockside period included loading and inventorying thousands of pounds of critical shipboard materials and equipment, conducting mission critical training to prepare for possible shipboard casualties while underway, conducting extensive maintenance and repair on most of the shipboard machinery, electronics, auxiliary systems.

The cutter Walnut is a 225-Foot Seagoing Buoy Tender, which was previously homeported in Honolulu and will now be homeported in Pensacola, Fla. The cutter’s primary missions are aids to navigation, search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, maritime environmental protection and national defense missions.