Grand Haven coast guard festival is held on an annual basis to honor marine and coast guard personnel that spend much of the year out at sea protecting the nation from potential enemy attack. The festival may sound ordinary but it carries a huge significant to the coast guard personnel and their families. Each year the festival attracts thousands of visitors who come to honor the coast guard at Grand Haven also known as “coast guard city”.

The day carries huge significant and annually the numbers of spectators who come to honor the coast guard personnel increases bringing challenges of its own. Although the festival only lasts 10 days, many of the visitors come in early or leave a few days after the festival something that has both positive and negative aspects. During this festival the coast guard brings their hardware proudly to display to the thousands of spectators and in turn different groups offer the honor personnel and officers at Grand Haven coast guard. This process is continual over the ten day period as vessel come and goes, constantly being replaced by other vessel, aircraft and personnel that comprise the coast guard as a whole unit.

 

Due to the nature of their work it is obvious that coast guard personnel and hard ware do not all attend the festival; since they must remain stationed and vigilant even during this festival, in fact they tend to have a higher level of alert or vigil during this period and many smugglers would expect that the water are coast guard free and would attempt to make the dash during this time.  The situation at the festival also calls for extra security especially after the increase in terrorism over the past 2 decades. The security is tight and many under cover agents are posted to Grand Haven coast guard festival each year.

 

The Grand Haven coast guard festival is a

great moral booster for the personnel that work on the vessel since it helps sooth stress and isolation that they have to endure for months at a time. Knowing or seeing huge crowds of people waiting to cheer you as you enter the harbor make many of the crewmen boost moral for the next year on the force with anticipation of receiving this honor again and again. The psychology involved can easily be compared to when a person achieves a major ranking on any job and is honored by hosting a huge party or when athlete wins a tournament at the Olympics and gets a chance to stand on the podium and receive a gold medal.

 

Providing this level of consolation to a person who sacrifices his life towards a nation’s securuity or well being should always be honored with pomp. Most armed forces and security forces have festivals that resemble the Grand Haven coast guard festivals and they are all aimed at providing show of pride for the troops that provide their service to keep us secure.