predecessor, Maple (WAGL-234). This Maple arrived in Sitka, Alaska, her first homeport, on September 29, 2001. She was commissioned there on October 19, 2001, with her sponsor, Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer, speaking again. The ship replaced USCGC Woodrush at that station. Her primary mission was servicing aids to navigation. The diversity of activities within this mission is suggested by a six-day patrol in October 2008. She recovered a buoy that was adrift in Peril Strait, decommissioned 18 seasonal buoys in Prince William Sound, repaired a light in Tenakee Inlet on Chichicoff Island, and saved a fishing boat from going aground. In addition to maintaining navigation buoys, Maple partnered with NOAA to service offshore weather buoys. In 2013 she partnered with USGS to deploy ocean-bottom seismometers to study earthquake behavior in Southeast Alaska. Maple also supported search and rescue missions. In May 2004 the ferry LeConte went aground on Cozian Reef on her way to Sitka. Maple and USCGC Anacapa responded to the scene. In September 2004 Maple was dispatched as part of a large, unsuccessful effort to find an aircraft that was lost with five people aboard. A light oil sheen was found on Peril Strait and it was hoped that Maple's side-scan sonar might locate the wreck on the sea bottom. Aircraft spotted a drifting barge 60 miles southeast of the Kenai Peninsula in September 2006. Maple intercepted the craft, which was long, and found that it was abandoned and empty, with no identifying marks as to its origin. On July 12, 2017 Maple left Sitka for the last time. She sailed for a mid-life overhaul at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland via the Northwest Passage across the top of Alaska and Canada. She was only the sixth Coast Guard vessel ever to have completed the transit. She was accompanied over much of the route by Canadian icebreakers and research ships including CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, CCGS Amundson, and CCGS Terry Fox. While the scheduled overhaul was the driver of the trip, scientific objectives were met along the way. Maple hosted a scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the passage. The ship arrived in Baltimore on August 28, 2017. After Maple reached the Coast Guard Yard, her crew was transferred to USCGC Kukui, which had just completed her mid-life overhaul. They sailed their new vessel back from Baltimore to Sitka via the Panama Canal,