Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Jose Hernandez | Petty Officer 2nd Class Collin Pace, a culinary specialist aboard USCGC Maple (WLB...... read more read more
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Petty Officer 2nd Class Collin Pace, originally from the Philadelphia area, joined the Coast Guard in 2017. He is now a culinary specialist aboard USCGC Maple (WLB 207) and was previously at Sector New York.
"I graduated high school went to Portland state university for two years," Pace said. "I got sidetracked, got a job, and then school was not working out for me. I don't know where the spark came from, but I wanted to go to culinary school. I talked to my dad a little bit more about it; he just retired as a Master Chief after 29 years in the Coast Guard as a culinary specialist. He said it would be a good way for me to go to culinary school and get the feel of it without putting myself in debt."
Pace was aboard Maple's recent deployment to the Gulf of Mexico after multiple hurricanes. He recently participated in Exercise Argus, the Danish Joint Arctic Command's annual joint large-scale Exercise Argus in Southern Greenland. Deployed forces demonstrated U.S. Coast Guard capabilities to build partner capacity and expertise in search and rescue, incident management, and marine environmental response. These efforts solidify key strategic relationships while achieving mutual Danish, Greenlandic, and U.S. goals in the North American Atlantic Arctic and Northwest Atlantic Ocean.
"We did a hurricane response and went to the Gulf for almost a month came back home, and another hurricane hit the Gulf, so we went straight back and did another three weeks," he said. "We ended up working a whole year's worth of buoys in 16 days."
Every crew member has a job on a buoy tender. Pace's job is to prep and cook meals for the rest of the crew during their patrols.
"Good food can go a long way," he said. "Some of these guys may have a bad day, and the food that we serve can make or break their day. I know these guys are working super hard, and it's nice to be able to put a smile on their face."
Pace said working at a Sector compared to a buoy tender is very different.
"Sometimes at a sector, you can become complacent; it's more like going to a regular job," he said. "As a CS, you go to the galley cook breakfast, lunch, and maybe dinner; then you go home. It's different going to a unit where you are actually out in the field doing Coast Guard work. Like here, you can get involved and do other things besides being a cook. If you want to work on the buoy deck, you can do it; if you want to run the helm, you can do that as well. There are more opportunities, and you feel like you are more engaged in the Coast Guard."
Pace has two more years left in his contract, and after that, he plans on going back to school and finishing his computer science degree.
| Date Taken: | 06.24.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2021 13:17 |
| Story ID: | 401192 |
| Location: | ATLANTIC OCEAN |
| Hometown: | ATLANTIC BEACH, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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