The Navy is rolling out the first five new Harbor Patrol boats.
The new boats are faster and more maneuverable than the older models, which are nearly 15 years old, says Petty Officer 1st Class David Harrington. The gray boats are seen throughout Hampton Roads.
“We can spot, initiate and react to any kind of situation that might threaten or not only appear the base itself, but the warships themselves,” Harrington said. “So we're kind of like in our early warning system.”
Harrington demonstrated how quickly the boats can turn into the waves, as they moved along the waterfront.
“The older boats couldn’t turn like that because they had a double-hull, which felt more like a pontoon boat,” he said.
The new boats have a V-shaped hull. At 27 feet long, they’re also slightly shorter than the older boats, he said.
The crews move up and down the waterfront in front of Navy facilities, around the clock. The Navy Harbor Patrol doesn’t interact with the public on the same level as the U.S. Coast Guard, but their patrols routinely encounter boaters who stray into waters protected by the Navy, said John Garcia, who is a civilian in charge of the Navy Harbor Patrol.
“I think the only challenge that they have to deal with is the weather, the seas and the traffic through the channel, because the traffic is right outside the base,” he said.
The new boats were rolled out to Naval Station Norfolk in July, after the crews for the two-man vessels were retrained. Each boat costs $475,000.
Over the next two years the boats will replace older boats at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.
