“Lieutenant Sean MacKenzie, a 1992 Coast Guard Academy graduate, had just started to settle into his first command assignment as skipper of the 110’ Island Class cutter Adak on 9/11. Adak was at her berth at Station Sandy Hook, getting her steering system fixed. The steering mechanism was completely disassembled when the first aircraft hit the Trade Center. From his perch on the cutter’s open bridge, MacKenzie could see the smoke coming from the towers. His summer of fisheries patrols off Cape Cod, accompanied by beautiful weather and flat calm seas, suddenly seemed like a far-off dream, as Activities New York called the Station and asked Adak to make preparations to get underway. Electrician’s Mate First Class Juan Vasquez jury-rigged the Adak’s steering system so that MacKenzie could steer the cutter by hand.

Adak’s lines were taken in and the cutter backed out from her berth. Spouses of the crew, alerted to the sudden departure, waved from the pier. Adak made her way into the Sandy Hook Channel and toward the Verrazano Bridge, twenty-five minutes away at full speed. From the bridge, Adak ran across New York Harbor and at noon took up station off the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan.

Quartermaster First Class Matthew James placed a piece of Plexiglas over Adak’s chart of the harbor, and he and Lieutenant MacKenzie began to plot the positions of all of the Coast Guard cutters and small boats converging on Lower Manhattan. From that moment, until the arrival after midnight of the Tahoma from New Bedford, Massachusetts, Adak acted as a command and control center and On Scene Commander for all Coast Guard underway units in New York, to keep everyone out of the harbor save for the vessels directly providing rescue and assistance.” – Excerpt from Rogue Wave – The Coast Guard on and After 9/11