My Voyage Aboard USCGC ‘Eagle’
This summer, I had the rare privilege of sailing aboard the USCGC Eagle, the Coast Guard’s iconic barque, from San Francisco to San Pedro. While I’ve been fortunate to sail on Eagle before — last summer I joined her from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire — this voyage was different. It wasn’t just about the miles logged or the sails set; it was about the setting, the mission, and the remarkable people aboard.
Eagle was on her 2025 West Coast tour, a deployment that carried her from the East Coast to the Pacific. This tour was historic in its own right: Eagle doesn’t often venture to the far side of the world. Her homeport is New London, Connecticut, and her missions typically unfold in the Atlantic and Caribbean. A Pacific voyage means thousands of miles under her keel, challenging conditions, and the chance for new audiences to see and step aboard “America’s Tall Ship.” For those on the West Coast, it was an opportunity to connect with a living piece of maritime history — one with a past as complex as it is inspiring. The leg I joined was part of “Swab Summer Shorts,” a unique training program for the incoming class of Coast Guard Academy cadets. These “swabs,” as they’re known, spend their first summer at the Academy in an intense indoctrination period: physically grueling, mentally taxing, and designed to forge discipline, resilience, and teamwork. By the time they step aboard Eagle, they’ve been living in a constant state of high alert, drilling, training, and learning the fundamentals of military life.
This weeklong sail offers them something different: a chance to breathe, to reset, and to channel the pressure of Swab Summer into hands-on seamanship. On Eagle, the classroom has no walls, the ceiling is sky, and the lessons are felt in the heave of the deck and the pull of the lines. For many, it’s the first time they’ve been at sea. They learn to work the rigging, steer the ship, keep watch, and, perhaps most importantly, to function as a crew: a skill that will serve them in every role they take on in the Coast Guard.
As one might expect of San Francisco, the breeze was pumping as we made our way under the Golden Gate Bridge in a scene worthy of a postcard. Only two hours into our voyage, the tone shifted to something more intimate and awe-inspiring: A pod of hundreds of humpback whales surrounded us.
The ocean boiled with their movement — tails slapping, blows sending mist into the air, massive backs breaking the surface in slow, graceful arcs in every direction. For nearly three hours, we slowed the ship and delayed setting the square sails, mindful of the risk of striking one of these giants. Conversations quieted, replaced by the sound of water and the occasional exclamation when a whale surfaced close by. In a way, it felt like a second departure — a blessing from the Pacific before we truly began.