This summer, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to scuttle the Alaska patrol of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter when over 10% of the crew was put in quarantine. But the ship’s mission was saved when a large group of cadets — the youngest, newest and most-inexperienced members of the Coast Guard — was called on to help.
To use a very old nautical phrase, Captain Blake Novak was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Novak is commanding officer of the cutter Munro, one of the biggest vessels in the Coast Guard fleet at 418 feet.