Hey. What's up? I'm
Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. We are right in the middle
of a Deep Dive series into the US Coast Guard and all the crazy stuff
they do because it's impressive. Like we've already looked at
how they respond to distress signals. We've looked at the science
of search patterns, and there's a ton of other cool stuff
that I've already filmed. That's incredible,
and I'm excited to share it with you. But today we're going to look at one
of the workhorses of the US Coast Guard. It's called the Response Boat Medium. This thing is incredible. It's a 45 foot long,
computer controlled jet boat that has like hyper maneuverability. It can do all kinds of different things. So instead of me like
try to explain what it does, why don't I just go look at some of the public
domain footage released by the Coast Guard and let's look at a few clips
and see what this thing can do. Check this out. Here's some flare imagery
from an aircraft of some sort observing some survivors
floating on top of their capsized boat. The response boat medium. The RBM arrives on scene
and the survivors are rescued. This is the bread and butter of what
this thing does. It gets out to the scene fast
and gets survivors out of the water. Here's another example of it
being used in an interesting way. Here you can see the RBM evacuating a person off of a cruise ship
for a medical emergency. This one's pretty interesting. Here you can see an RBM
responding to a distress call. 24 miles off the coast of Texas. In this one,
you can see those powerful jets working behind the RBM
and the rough seas to keep it in position around the sailboat
as it's trying to save the folks on board. The ended up
saving four souls on this distress call. Although most times
people are excited to see the RBM, there are other times when people
are not so excited to see the RBM. Here we can see a guy out
for a nice stroll on his boat. It seems to be very loaded down
very heavy. Unfortunately,
he's loaded down with drugs. This is a drug runner and here you can see an RBM on the flare
imagery here coming up alongside. He's probably saying something like,
Excuse me, sir, can we please have a chat? And you can see. That the drug runner. Says, No, thank you, and I'm going to go
as fast as my boat can go. At that point, the highly trained Coast
Guard personnel pull out firearms and start neutralizing the outboard motors
on the drug runner boat. And you can tell that they are at that point, more interested in the chat
with the Coast That is legit. So today I am super excited to continue
the Coast Guard deep dive with you, and we're going to try to learn everything
we can about the response boat medium. The RBM lets go get smarter every day. So I went down to Destin, Florida station Destin
and we got to do all kinds of stuff. I learned how to finger whistle. That's always fun. Holy cow. Are you serious? It's an amazing thing to see
how a normal Coast Guard station operates and you'll see that in an upcoming video. Okay, let's get things started. Cory Palmer, who's the senior chief over
station Destin, is going to give me my first introduction to the RBM. We're going to walk out there
and he's just going to give me an overview of what it is
and where everything is located. Have the jet drive, correct? Yes. I've never interacted with the jet drive,
but I hear it's quite a thing. So we have an on. Yes, sir, we can hop on Cool. Oh, wow. Got some insulation here for the sun. Yeah, for the sun. Keep things a little cooler. This is actually one of our one of
the boats that has air conditioning on it. Which is a plus when you're out here, down here,
we call this the survivors compartment. Kind of use it for just that. If we bring a lot of people on board
and we have a long run to do. You've got rudimentary kitchen
type facilities. And you had a microwave that helps us out. We also have a head in here. Oh,
wow. Yeah. So this is like kind of the center
of the engine room. I like to open up these hatches for you. Yeah. Tool there. Yeah. Oh, wow. So he's obviously another one, just like. Beast. Yeah. This is a Detroit diesel. Yeah. Also empty you six cylinder diesel engine. 825 horsepower for both engines. It moves a lot of water. So how fast can these go? This or do anywhere
from about like 41 to 43 knots? Golly. Yeah. This is a lot of boat to go that fast. Yeah, very maneuverable. It can also stop very quickly. Because you can throw down that
what do you call it on the back we call. Buckets. Buckets? Yeah. So you've got the jet
and the bucket comes up. Yeah. When you're going forward,
the buckets are up. And then when you want to go reverse the bucket
or come down and redirect that thrust forward. I get a closer look at this bucket design. When I saw an RBM up on blocks
and Coast Guard sector Mobile in Mobile, Alabama, when Lieutenant Trevor Vallet
showed me around. Here we are at the back
of one of these boats. These are two what you call them, jet
drives. Jet drives. Okay. So I can tell that it's clearly moving
water here comes back out here. But look at this. So it's got this I don't know what you call this a scoop. The fluid can come here and then it gets
parted and it changes that fluid momentum. So that would pull the boat backwards
when it's in this configuration. What's the intake? So the water. Oh, wow. So the water goes in there
and then it shoots it out here or it'll divert it and it can go backwards. So down here, this is the the lazeret. This is the what. The lazeret. It is it okay if I go. In there? Yes. And what is the purpose of the lazeret? It this is it's
got our steering equipment. So the controls for those buckets
you were just looking. At, this is all hydraulics, right? Yes. So these are. We call them
DCVs directional control valves and that's what the little solenoids are actuators
that tell the hydraulic fluid where to go. Oh, that's awesome. The little valves.
Yeah. Oh, so that whole thing is a
is a basically a block. It's like a manifold. Yeah. And then those go in and out and I can see
all the hydraulic ins and outs. Yeah. That's awesome. That kind of tape taper portion
right there. This one right here. Yes. Uh huh. That is where the the impeller kind of shaft
comes through from the engine that way. Yeah. And there's a big impeller in there or a little propeller,
wherever you want to call it. That spinning and that's that's
what's forcing that water out. So you've got two controls here. One of them in my. Correct and saying
one of them is for the bucket. Yeah. And then the other one,
can you actually direct the. Yeah. You're steering. Oh that's not tell you what direction
to send the thrust. That's amazing. That's really cool.
Thanks for showing me that. Absolutely. This folds out, right? That folds up. Up. And then you can
it's a little stairwell down. You can walk down. If you look on this side, it's
this one is up at the moment. Oh, hey, fish. Yeah, okay. And why would you want to walk down? Because you want to get down here
so you can interact with the other the other boat. Yeah,
if we need to bring someone on board, like if someone was in the water, it's
a difficult task to pull someone 250 lbs out. You want to be as close to the water. So when you're getting them up,
you can, you can get about. Doing that from up
here would be really challenging. So this
this boat is extremely maneuverable. Yes. You have a. Human right there. Yeah. So that means steering
this thing is very important. Yes. Instead of a steering wheel,
it's got to joysticks. There's this boat can actually drive
sideways if you need to. And those buckets will do their thing. And make the boat
kind of go wherever needed to. The next morning, I got to go out to the RBMs
as two of the crew members were getting the boats
ready to go out to sea. Now, the interesting thing for me
is this felt more like preflight
check outs on a Blackhawk helicopter, then getting a boat
ready to go out on the water. Okay, this is Ortiz and Machachi. Well, what are your ranks? And K three and K three. And I'm a seaman. What are we doing? It's a pre-mission
check. Pre mission check. Yeah. Okay, cool. We're going to. Secure the shore. Power of shore power is
what gives the boat power. Well, while it's at the pier,
take it right off shore power. Turn the alarm off. Come back here,
and we're going to check everything. She's going to go down in the middle. Check the engine oil. Make sure that we have enough
to make sure that the quality's good. How are you doing that, Ortiz? I'm just untightening this, and then go ahead and pull the normal dipstick. Yes, just check it. It's good. Little low. That's good. It's halfway. Done over. Here, checking it back. So I'm check in regular oil. So it's all. It's all 15 w 40 and all three of the oil. So we're going to check up. So check the radiator oil
and make sure we have oil in there. We're going to check the jet drive. Well, she's right here. It's good if you check in the other engine
now Ortiz Yes, just got done. Good to go. There's basically just a big jet ski. Big jet ski. Yeah, I love it. It's great. So Justin just took short power away.
All right. Which engine was the starboard? Starboard. Okay, it's like three fourths. It's not. Okay, I'm going to put oil in it. Yeah. So once we're done with that,
we come down here to the vector
control system breaker panel. So it's right against this bulkhead here. And that gives a steering of propulsion
or steering. It's right here. This little guy. There you are. And I check with discharge through so we look in these holes here,
see water sloshing around. That means you got raw water. Discharge that hole right there. Yep. That's what I hear as well. You check it for water
spitting out of that. Exactly. Yeah. I'll come in here
and turn the generators on. And once these green lights
start blinking, that means the generators are synchronized
and ready to put the most generator power. It's a 120 vac
coming out of those generators. We've got 12 volts
direct current 24, direct current 24, 24. And then over here is our AC bus and then since we're synchronized
we can put it the generator power there, you start firing everything on. Do you love this. I love this. Yeah. This is good stuff. Yes. This is our yes, this is our chart
water right here suggest. Is he getting the boat ready for you? For the crew. Yeah. We're going know who's driving the deck,
how we got it driving. What's the official term for that
coxswain? You're the coxswain today. Yeah. Do you love it? As much as he loves
making the engine work. I think I do
it is in the steering nozzles right here. So when I go left, go all the way left. Yeah, and so on, you know, and then
we got our buckets, our reversing buckets so if I bring those back, I'll
go all the way back, all the way forward. And one, I. Can also change the interceptors,
which gets. Us on plane whoa. Second all,
is that trim? Yeah. How are you doing? How are you doing this? So when you want to check
the interceptors, you bring it. You bring the buckets all the way forward, and then you pull this down, and that
brings the interceptors all the way up. You can actually plane out the boat.
Yeah, exactly. You plane out the boat with those things,
just like you're trimming an airplane. Exactly. Yeah. We're going to check
all of our floodlights. Yeah, we're on the boat,
so there is 4 of them. And then we got a spotlight up top
that's awesome. Yeah. Can can we
can you see the bucket move back there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you open the inspection? So yeah, some crack all the way forward. Buckets are up to the jam. Just go straight back now. He's in full reverse. Gotcha. That's amazing. So that's something you can watch. If you look down on the lazeret,
you can see all this happening so this is the steering,
and this will move our nozzles. Yeah, this is the reversing bucket. So when you say this steer nozzle,
is it actually moving off left and right? Yeah. So the nozzles move like this. Can we see the bucket move? Yeah. Wow. Oh, dude I see it! Yeah. So this is a
so this is a hydraulic actuator. Yeah. And you have this. Linkage
because that is your feedback that tells. You that the bucket actually went back. Yeah. This this is why this is showing you
on the back of the display panel what where the bucket is.
This is our direction. Of control. Now, this is what all the hydraulic fluid
comes here. Yeah. And in this is what actually controls
the right perspective. Why do you have two valves on this side when you get three on this side,
this manifold seems to be larger. So that manifold actually. So there's only one piston
for the steering ramp. It's on that side right behind you. This one is the only controlling bucket
for the starboard side and interceptor for the starboard side down there. Gotcha. That one's got a steering bucket. And after that steering grab
is that big one right there? Yeah. I want to show this right here. Yeah, that's the whole thing
with the steering wheel. My goodness. Sidearm. So you got one. You got one hydraulic actuator, and these
two are mechanically coupled together. Exactly. Yep. It's going to just sit here
however you need it to be. So it makes them both operate in parallel. So when you. Say adjust it so that you adjust trim
so that. They're running parallel with each other. So what you can do is you can come out for just but for some reason
or you needed to adjust it. You can, you can change,
you can change it here. So where the nozzles are like this will either be like this, like that,
you know, like that. So right now they're perfectly aligned. You're sitting on.
The filter for seawater. Yeah, this is the raw water strainer.
Duplex strainer right here. Yeah. And there's one over here. So that's the that's the other filter. Dude, I have to get your picture
because I can tell how much you love this. Yeah. So you're ready so it's a great. Picture, dude. So. And he's doing right now. We're going to get oil samples
from the engine lot above 140 degrees we will test the limits, like. All right, well, falling ball the fuel. Is this the same thing? Like, you take you take it's a metal ring
and it goes down into the oil, and then a ball is falling on it,
and then it rubs the ball, and then you measure how much it rubs
off. Is it how it works or. So hours it's three balls. One goes into a clean oil sample. Okay. And to go into the dirty oil or,
you know, used oil. Sample time thing, it's
a. It is a time thing. So the clean oil, the ball will go much
slower because it's not the related oil. The two others compared to the clean
oil will tell you how much fuel oil dilution you have. Oh, wow. So it's it's
just a little falling ball. It's it's it's very analog. So they finish getting everything
together, release the moorings. And we got underway. Ortiz, you tell me where to be, okay? To show how maneuverable everything can be just
and put the boat into a special mode. We have it's called docking mode. We can drive sideways. So I'm going to go
I'm going to do a circle around this boy. I'm going to keep my ball on
and the whole time I'm going to drive sideways. So he has the ability to go
sideways. Yeah. So the boat can go
whatever direction he wants. Basically, his steering nozzle
will give him control where the bow is. The other the other joystick will control the front,
the side back and back over there. Yeah. Basically what's happening
is the buckets are splitting. So one bucket is facing board and one bucket is facing aft. So that just gives you the ability
to do so well. Donuts in the water. So he's just keeping his. Nose
right at that boy. And then just going straight around it.
Yep. Yep. So this one here is my propulsion. So for this, for propulsion, is back propulsion. And then if I want to go side to side,
I just. Yeah, whatever it is, I just turn it all the way to one side. It's move it straight to one side, you know, it's my back
is going to fall off this direction because it's pushing the boat
the serve that way. Yeah. I'll go the other direction.
I bring it all the way this way and the
boat is going to move straight over. So what is the one on the left?
Forgive me. Steering, steering. But you have to have forward momentum
in order for it to be doing anything. Is that correct? Not true. So with a jet drive, it's kind of always
moving a little bit of water. So I have no propulsion engage. I can still turn my tiller all the way
to the left, and we're going to go left. Got to pivot. Got it. There are only three variables
that make this thing do what it do. And it's incredible. You've got engine speed, you've got
steering and you've got bucket position. By using these three variables,
you were able to do incredible things with this boat. Let's dove into it. Okay, let's start with the obvious. We have two jets
coming out the back of the boat, and each of those can provide thrust
without any other variable. We can move the boat forward
by simply turning the jets on. But because we can control
engine speed on each of those jets, we also have the ability
to control the flow going out of each jet, which means we can rev up one of the engines higher than the other
and more water flows out of that jet. And we can create an imbalance which will result in a torque or rotation
around the boat's center of mass. So are we rotating
about the center of mass or are we rotating about the center
of pressure or the center of drag? It's complicated. All that being said,
just know that the control system that we're working with here
takes all of that into account. What are the other ways
we can use our inputs to steer this thing? You remember down in the lazeret, both
jets always steer in the same direction. They move in tandem. So that creates a way that we can create
rotation and steer the boat, angle the thrusters, and it creates rotation
along with forward thrust. So angling those thrusters
is one of our possible control inputs. Now we get to the really fun thing we can do, and that's unique to jet boats
and that is drop the bucket. If we drop a bucket down
into the flow of the rear, we're jet. It will split and redirect
that flow and angle it back forward. And this can pull the boat backwards. This is why the RBM can stop so fast. The fact that you can be moving along at cruising engine speed
and then suddenly drop the buckets down into the propulsive jets
without even changing your engine speed. And you can go to full power forward
to full reverse without having to wait on engine changes.
A reversing of the transmission. You're
just instantly redirecting the thrust by putting that bucket down in the flow
to be able to stop a boat this large in such a short distance,
like a length and a half of the RBM. That is incredible. What's the LCD display here? You can see the position
of the buckets show that the buckets are up
and you can also see the support and starboard
engine speeds are displayed here. When they want to stop, they simply drop the buckets
down into the flow and it instantly slams the RBM into reverse
and it stops it in just a few seconds. It's like power breaking. The buckets can also be used separately. If you put one bucket down with equal flow
going out, both jet nozzles, you could put the boat into a spin
by the creation of a rotational force. The non bucketed jet would push
the nose forward from the thrust and the bucket of jet would pull
the nose backwards, creating a torque. In this instance, both engines
would be exerting a force in a clockwise direction, resulting in a rotational force
spinning the boat switch. The bucket positions in the rotation
would reverse and the boat would rotate
counterclockwise. Okay, so the fact that we can drop in
raised buckets independently that's huge, right? You can do so much just with that,
but the fact that you can actually steer within those buckets
while they're raising or dropping, that opens up a whole new level. This was the aha moment for me
when I started to understand this. Let's say we wanted to move sideways
to our port side. If we put the port side bucket down
and angle the jets to the starboard side, we would have forced from the buckets
pushing us to the port side, but there would be this angular rotation
pulling the nose towards that jet. Thankfully, we have the starboard side
and bucketed jet, which would both move the boat forward and create angular
rotation, pushing the nose away from it. So now by also adjusting
the variable thrust in each engine we can create a balanced maneuver
where we control how fast we go sideways with the ability
to control the rotation of the boat. If we wanted to go sideways the other direction,
we could reverse the buckets we could angle the steering
in the other direction and we could adjust the engine speed
to get the desired motion that we want. All this maneuverability
from just a few little inputs in the back. It's incredible. And now you can see why they need
an onboard control computer, because what it's doing is it's taking
those joystick inputs from the human and the computer
is translating that into boat valve speak to give the desired outputs
to get the boat where it needs to go or try to do
what the human wants it to do. Bonus, by the way,
there's even another variable there's this thing called interceptors. There's like these little wings that control the trim of the boat,
but before they go into a turn, they can dip one of these into the water. And there's so much. This is an awesome boat. And now you can see why
I wanted to make a video on the RBM. It's fantastic.
Anyway, let's get back on the boat. So I'm going to come out. Okay. Well, coming up, I I. Coming up. Machachi So you're looking for people
in the water. Yeah. Any boats. Any jet ski that I can really see,
there's small, anything like that. Well, make sure we're not going to hit
anybody hes moving fast. You're looking out as well. Yeah, I'm checking radar,
making sure he sees everything. He's going to keep his eyes open.
I'm going to look for it. He's not looking just to make it. There's no boats that come out of nowhere. What's your hand on over there? Is that the traffic control? What is that? This is the exact same that he has got it just so you can switch controls to either
side. Okay, this comes down. I can drive from here. Got it. So this right here is. Is running normal. And this is what happens when
I bring the interceptor all the way down. You can tell the. The displacement of the water
is coming up and move forward. So if you bring
it back up. Justin. Yeah, by the way, water will move back up,
which means our bow came up. What? You have a camera
in the engine compartment yeah. Yeah, you can see the CCTV camera. Are you serious? Yeah. So that's for when umm. That's like some spaceship stuff, man. That's legit. So whenever anything goes
wrong with the boat, we have something called a becky
Making Fun of me. Just not because I love how excited you. I'm just really excited about your camera
and your engine. So every time something goes wrong, it's all right. We have a checklist. Yeah.
Anything that can go wrong? Pretty much. Yeah. These are all problems. You go into the index, your table contents find, which everyone is going to be. So main engine, high water temperature. Actually,
we'll do this one, cause it's more fun. We'll do the foul water jet. Okay, so a foul water jet number 23. This is. You want to run this becky
and let's just run for good. So first thing's first and we'll come down oh, hot water
before the starboard engine coming down. Pretty much. We come back
here, we'll go out of the water, make sure there's no line
that may have been sucked up in so we don't see any we're in clear water. Everything looks good out here,
so we're good to back flush. Plus hes going to bring it up to 1200
R.P.M. those intake grates I was telling you about
it's only about going to shoot more water and through the nozzles
shoot water out that way. So in that case, you know, it didn't clear that I would go down in the lazeret and
enter in lazeret at the back and strainers would say, you know,
this one's got a bunch of debris in it. Yeah. All it to do is pull this lever up and switch around all over there. It's going to use the strainer instead. And then when we get back later,
I'm going to clean that strainer out well. It's literally a valve. That's it. Now we're on the other strainer
switching over. We're going to go, okay, by engaging. Engaging I. We get in the way. We usually do at least a few. Beckys is making its basic
engineering casualty control exercise so it's how we train for
if we do have an actual casualty. And so when it does happen,
you know, it's muscle memory. We already do exactly what we need to
do. we pull up the becke book in case we miss anything,
make sure we don't miss anything. But, you know, it's
just it's training for us. The RBM can do way more than we discussed
here. It's got an onboard flair to help
find survivors at night, and it's able to operate in crazy icy
environments and big swells. I found both the RBM in the young men and women
operating it to be equally impressive. Like the RBM these folks are versatile,
they've got drive and they get stuff done. As we return to base,
I had a casual conversation with Justin, who also likes photography
and listening to him. Maybe excited about our future
as a nation, knowing that motivated leaders like this are coming up
through the ranks of the US Coast Guard. You're only 20 years old. I just turned 21 actually. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So it's like. It's like fast forwarding your life. Yeah, it's. It's a very definitely a fast track. Ortiz. Yes. Do you mind me. Asking how old you are? I just turned 20. Really? Yeah. You feel like
this is a lot for a 20 year old. I mean, I love it. It's preparing me. If this is a lot,
then like I'm going to be prepared, like for whatever comes to me. What do you want to be like?
Is this what you want to do? You want to make a career out of this you said you wanted me out of my
whole life. HOLD ON We got to go we have to go back to station we have to spot something off shore Station Destin had received a call
about a possible incident offshore, and since we were so close to the station,
they decided to swing back in and pick up one of their local
law enforcement officers. My buddy George was at the station
when the call came in, so he turned on his iPhone
and recorded the return to station. From his. Perspective. On deck actually just. What was the call was taking on water. Now they can't get a hold of him. Natalie. sleep Guy called in about a capsized vessel at this position. They can't.
They tried calling the number back and cant reach him. They cant reach him Six miles offshore, south of Sarah's
Island, next to the rudder. Nice to meet you. All right, well, I didn't get to say goodbye. Because they're going to try
to get somebody that capsized, but thank you very much. Coast Guard station Destin. This is quite the experience. I hope they find him. This episode of Smarter
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thank you so much for considering. Supporting the sponsor. Why did you choose
Coast Guard over Air Force tell me straight up Ortiz. Well they're only offering chairforce jobs and huge long contracts and I didn't even know
if I wanted to be like if yeah in the chair force for that long so I mean I'm I'd rather be on the water
I grew up on the water so I'm so glad I picked the Coast Guard. Honestly. Why? Because you're actually. I'm doing stuff. I'm not I'm not like I'm
not completely useless. You know, you're there. You did you just call the Air Force
useless? No, they're not useless. I'm just saying, I feel like I actually I feel like I actually, like, help here. I don't I don't know if I would help
in the Air Force Machachi. She's making fun of the Air Force
every year. How are we going to publish this, man? Oh. I don't know. But I think I think the Coast Guard does,
kind of in my experience, you know, some people do
kind of make fun of the Coast Guard. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, we always get made
fun of all the time. No one really knows what we do. But usually when we get made fun of,
I'm like, listen,
we're probably making more than you still. And we have our own apartment
and we have cooks that cook for us. We don't eat at the back,
so make fun of me all you want. We're living our best life. Oh, golly. Ortiz is slinging the fire. Okay. All right.
