page_title: USCGC Maple (WLB-207)
section_title: Operating history
hierarchical_section_title: USCGC Maple (WLB-207) / Operating history
caption_attribution_description: English: Pacific Ocean - The crew aboard Coast Guard Cutter Maple homeported in Sitka, Alaska, service NOAA buoys several hundred miles off the northern California coast August 26, 2010. The Maple crew worked with technicians from NOAA servicing these sensitive instruments in an effort to track and monitor changing ocean conditions. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Brad Dawson.
context_page_description: USCGC Maple (WLB-207) is a Juniper-class seagoing buoy tender operated by the United States Coast Guard. She was based at Sitka, Alaska for 16 years and is currently homeported at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Her primary mission is maintaining aids to navigation, but she also supports search and rescue, law enforcement, oil spill response, and other Coast Guard missions.
context_section_description: After her launch, Maple sailed down the Great Lakes and out into the Atlantic through the Saint Lawrence Seaway.  During the trip she stopped in Ogdensburg, New York the former homeport of her predecessor, Maple (WAGL-234).  This  Maple arrived in Sitka, Alaska, her first homeport, on September 29, 2001.  She was commissioned there on October 19, 2001 with her sponsor, Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer, speaking again. The ship replaced USCGC Woodrush at that station.  Her primary mission was servicing aids to navigation.  The diversity of activities within this mission is suggested by a six-day patrol in October 2008.  She recovered a buoy that was adrift in Peril Strait, decommissioned 18 seasonal buoys in Prince William Sound, repaired a light in Tenakee Inlet on Chichicoff Island, and saved a fishing boat from going aground.  In addition to maintianing navigation buoys, Maple partnered with NOAA to service offshore weather buoys.  In 2013 she partnered with USGS to deploy ocean-bottom seismometers to study earthquake behavior in Southeast Alaska.
  Maple also supported search and rescue mission.  In May 2004 the ferry LeConte went aground on Cozian Reef on her way to Sitka.  Maple and USCGC Anacapa responded to the scene.  In September 2004 Maple was dispatched as part of a large, unsuccessful effort to find an aircraft that was lost with five people aboard.  A light oil sheen was found on Peril Strait and it was hoped that Maple's side-scan sonar might locate the wreck on the sea bottom.  Aircraft spotted a drifting barge 60 miles southeasst of the Kenai Peninsula in September 2006.  Maple intercepted the craft, which was 200 feet (61 m) long, and found that it was abandoned and empty, with no identifying marks as to its origin.
  On July 12, 2017 Maple left Sitka for the last time.  She sailed for a mid-life overhaul at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland via the Northwest Passage across the top of Alaska and Canada.  She was only the sixth Coast Guard vessel ever to have completed the transit.  She was accompanied over much of the route by Canadian icebreakers and research ships including CCGS Sir Wilfred Laurier, CCGS Amundson, and CCGS Terry Fox.   While the scheduled overhaul was the driver of the trip, scientific objectives were met along the way.  Maple hosted a scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the passage.  The ship arrived in Baltimore on August 28, 2017.
  After Maple reached the Coast Guard Yard, her crew was transferred to USCGC Kukui, which had just completed her mid-life overhaul.  They sailed their new vessel back from Baltimore to Sitka via the Panama Canal, completing a circumnavigation of North America, in July 2018.  Kukui replaced Maple at Sitka on a permanent basis.
  Maple was the fourth Juniper-class cutter to receive her mid-life overhaul under of the Coast Guard's In-Service Vessel Sustainment program. The goal of the work was to extend the ship's life for another 15 years.  During her upgrade much of her deck equipment, machinery control, propeller, and HVAC systems were overhauled.  Corroded steel was replaced. Maple left the Coast Guard Yard on November 7, 2018.  
  She arrived at her new homeport, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina in November 2018.  She replaced USCGC Elm at this station.  Her primary mission is maintaining over 200 aids to navigation along the Atlantic Coast from Shark River, New Jersey to the North Carolina-South Carolina border.  
  In 2019 Maple assisted NASA in testing the Crew Module Uprighting System of the Orion spacecraft, which is planned to land on water.
  Maple has earned four Coast Guard E ribbons and the Special Operations Service Ribbon during her career.
caption: USCGC Maple servicing a NOAA weather buoy in 2010
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