Coast Guard Cutter Alder Will Leave Duluth in July

After 16-years in Duluth, the Coast Guard Cutter Alder is scheduled to leave Duluth.

Sometime in July, the Alder will travel under the Aerial Lift Bridge for the last time on its way to its new home in San Francisco, California. Before it takes the long journey to California, it will travel through the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence Seaway south along the East Coast to the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, Maryland where it will undergo a year of maintenance.

After the journey to Baltimore, the Duluth based crew will return to the Twin Ports and wait for the delivery of their new ship, the Coast Guard Cutter Spar, which is also currently undergoing maintenance and will arrive in Duluth in the Spring of 2022.

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Originally home ported in Kodiak, Alaska, the Spar is also a 225’ buoy tender, like the Alder, and was commissioned in August 2001. The name Spar is a tribute to the former U.S. Coast Guard Women's Reserves known as SPARS.

This isn't the first Coast Guard ship with the name Spar, the original Spar was built here in Duluth in 1943 and decommissioned in February 1997. It's best known as the first ship to circumnavigate the North American continent within one year. The haul of the original Spar now sits in a 100-feet of water off the coast of North Carolina as an artifical reef.