Before we get too far into the new year I would like to thank my readers, and particularly those who have contributed to the discussion, for what I consider a very successful 2013.
I would also like to thank other bloggers who have seen fit to reference our little corner of the internet, including:
- thinkdefence.co.uk
- coltoncompany.com
- timawa.net
- cimsec.org
- http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/
- http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
Daily readership is up approximately 50% from where we ended 2012. During the course of the year, the site got 155,432 views. New monthly records of successively higher use were set in January, May, June, October, and December, the last with 16,909 hits. On a typical day about 200 individuals visit the site. WordPress tells me we had visitors from 170 countries, but I suspect some of those were were spammers, still, in the last year, readers in 32 different countries have made 200 or more views. Aside from the US the most frequent visits were (in order) from the UK, Canada, Philippines, Netherlands, Australia, France, Germany, Chile, India, Italy, Greece, and Japan, all with over 500 views.
I’m happy to see many readers are using my list of recommended blogs. It is in fact the most viewed post.
The busiest day of the year was December 5th with 1,700 views. The most popular post that day was What is a Corvette? and What Next?.
There were 239 new posts in 2013, pushing the total to 960 posts.
The posts most frequently viewed in 2013 were:
- 1 OPV to OPC July 2012
- 2 The Navy’s New Patrol Boat May 2012
- 3 Offshore Patrol Cutter Concepts June 2013
- 4 Five Year Capital Investment Plan, FY 2014-2018 May 2013
- 5 What Does It Take to Sink a Ship? March 2011
The most commented on post in 2013 was “Reinvent the Fifth Armed Service, Quickly”-USNI
I look forward to 2014 and will continue to try to give you material that is worth your time without duplicating stories on the official sources.
If anyone has any suggestions, or would like to write a post for publication here, you can contact me at chuckhhill@aol.com
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
I love Churck’s blog here, as it is a place that let’s those interested in supporting the CG have intelligent, or at least insightful conversations about the CG, it’s operations, it’s assets and it’s people. The one and only criticism I can think of with Chuck’s blog (and it’s members who post — including myself), is that it is a white-hull fleet centric blog. We talk a lot about NSCs, OPCs, budgets and operations, but they are mostly LE / military ops / patrol work. There are many articles on the Icebreakers and we discuss an arctic patrol cutter (still white-hulled…) occasionally, but the one thing I think is remiss here is talk about the black-hulled fleet. Hey, I know, it’s not glamorous, but they’re part of the CG too. Here’s a great article on icebreaking on the great lakes, which is mostly conducted by black-hulled assets:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_STEEL_ICY_SHUTDOWN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-07-16-49-55
Thanks Bill, Unfortunately I have had relatively little contact with either the black fleet or icebreakers. I don’t normally cover routine operations but if anyone would like to discuss issues facing these or other parts of the Coast Guard I would be happy to provide a forum. I do think the Inland fleet may be headed for problems, since its renewal seems to have been deferred.
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