Austal USA has laid the keel for Pickering (WMSM 919), the first Heritage-class Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) it is building for the U.S. Coast Guard at its ship manufacturing facility in Mobile, Alabama.
The vessel is the first of up to 11 cutters covered under a contract with a potential value of $3.3 billion, for which the Coast Guard has so far exercised options for six cutters.
The keel was authenticated during a ceremony attended by more than a hundred guests, including senior Coast Guard officials, elected representatives, local leaders and members of the shipbuilding teams.
Dr Meghan Pickering Seymour, the ship sponsor, welded her initials onto the keel plate as part of the longstanding naval tradition. She completed the weld with assistance from Austal USA advanced welder Ravi Khamsourin.
Dr Seymour is the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Colonel Timothy Pickering, after whom the first USCGC Cutter Pickering, launched in 1798, was named.
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