Sam Spade's San Francisco

The San Francisco-based Coast Guard Cutter Aspen and its crew are home again in San Francisco Bay. Their official dockside welcoming party is standing by as I write this. Aspen is expected to dock within the hour. Aspen has just returned after a five-month deployment recovering oil after the BP disaster.

Aspen is specially designed and equipped with a Spilled Oil Recovery System. The cutter has  a fast sweep boom that extends over the side of the hull by an outrigger arm and a weir skimmer that moves the oil collected in the boom onto shipboard storage tanks or a barge alongside the cutter. Aspen is one of the most technologically-advanced cutters in the fleet because of its oil recovery equipment.

During the deployment, Aspen's crew collected more than 187,000 gallons of BP oil from the Gulf Coast waters obetween the Mississippe Delta and Panama City, Florida.

Another call to duty came in to Aspen on the way home from the Gulf Coast. After transiting through the Panama Canal, Aspen received orders to proceed to a point where the Carnival Splendor was on fire and sitting dead in the water off the coast of Ensenada, Baja Mexico.

In this video, LCR Roy Burbaker, Aspen's commanding officer, explains the oil spill response operations aboard Aspen. The video was made as Aspen prepared to deploy to the Gulf Coast.

Aspen, a true multi-role vessel, can de deployed as a command and incident control center, logistics ship, servicing and repairing weather buoys, search and rescue operations and law enforcement duties.

USCGC Aspen's motto is "Tender of the Lost Coast."