How much time do you have off in the coast guard?

Answer 1

As with any member of the Armed Forces, a Coastie earns 2.5 days of leave a year (for a total of 30 days a year.) A day of leave is considered completely off duty and is similar to the Civilian vacation days. Unlike civilian vacation time however, if a coastie takes two weeks of leave, they must take leave days on the weekend in the middle. At the end of the calendar year anyone with more than 60 days of leave in reserve forfeits the days above 60. (There have been special cases where this limit is temporarily raised due to operations.)

Depending on the job you are assigned you will also have "Liberty time". Under normal conditions a Coastie works 40-60 hours per week, with the rest of the week considered liberty. For example someone working in a staff position (similar to a civilian office environment) works 8 hours per day monday through friday. A duty rotation might have someone work 12 hours on and 12 hours off two days in a row followed by two days off for a total of 48-60 hours per week. Someone assigned to a cutter underway could work 60-100 hours a week for a two month patrol, with reduced hours import to make up for the high tempo underway.

Unlike Leave, members on Liberty have to be able to return to their duty station able to work within a certain number of hours. (This is sometimes referred to as your B or Bravo status, with B-4 meaning that you need to return to your unit within four hours of their first attempt to call you. Note this is not when they first get a hold of you.)

Coasties also typically work until the job is done. This means that even if you are only scheduled to work 8 hours in a day, if something comes up you continue working until the job is complete.

Answer 2

Depends on the type of unit and the mission. The ice breakers typically deploy for six months. The high endurance cutters deploy for eight to twelve weeks if on a fishery or law enforcement patrol, six months if deployed to the Middle East. The medium endurance cutters deploy for four to six weeks. the patrol boats deploy for two weeks. Typically, the ships are in port for the same amount of time they are underway (four weeks deployed followed by four weeks home), so they spend about half their time underway. Needs of the service may render this discussion moot. Also the Coast Guard has stood up deployable land-based units in the recent past. Their mission and make-up is evolving, but they deploy for anywhere between three months and a year, depending on where they are needed and what they are doing.