The Coast Guard now has a home in Langley.

Starting in March, volunteer crews of the Coast Guard Auxiliary will be on call at the Langley Small Boat Harbor to take on search and rescue and vessel assist duties. The new duty is part of the Coast Guard’s First Responder program and is intended to close a gap in services active-duty Coast Guard personnel and vessels can no longer fill.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Coast Guard has been shifting more of its attention and man hours to port security. Ensign Jennifer Whitcomb, the Coast Guard’s Group Seattle Auxiliary liaison, said this week the group has been getting Auxiliary volunteers more involved in search and rescue and vessel assist duties since last June.

Without the people or time to do this work, as the active-duty Coast Guard once did, the service needs the Auxiliary.

“That actually is a big reason,” she said.

Currently there are more than 200 privately-owned and crewed boats in Puget Sound operating as Auxiliary vessels, Whitcomb said. In Langley, which is part of the Auxiliary’s Flotilla 18 area, a crew currently in training promises to bring at least three vessels on duty this spring. Chuck Leavitt, a coxswain with the Auxiliary, said he is working with four trainees — including his wife Jan — to get ready for the start of on-call duty.

On Saturday, Leavitt’s boat, the Seahorse, was decked out in Coast Guard Auxiliary insignia and set to start a training session. With trainees and certified crew member Jeremiah Ray aboard, the Seahorse made a rendezvous with two other boats from the Everett area to conduct towing drills off Hat Island.

Motoring in dense fog guided by radar and GPS, the Seahorse crew picked up valuable experience on the training day. Andrew Lewis, a South Whidbey High School student who is planning to join the Coast Guard after graduation, said even that fog couldn’t beat a recent night when the crew went on a search training voyage in the pitch black. He said it was well after midnight before the crew found its target, a buoy anchored at a coordinate they had to find by instrument.

“You don’t get bored out there,” he said.

Members of the local crew say they look forward to helping boaters in distress. Leavitt said having one or more Auxiliary crews on call in Langley is the fastest way to get help to a disabled vessel in an emergency situation or to a search area near the island. With the closest active-duty Coast Guard vessel in Seattle, the wait for search and rescue help can otherwise be hours.

The Auxiliary presence will add to the help offered by other Whidbey Island emergency services. Darin Reid, chief of special services for Fire District 3, said Monday that Auxiliary boats, which are larger and more powerful than the rigid inflatable rescue boat the district owns, will be useful in lengthy search operations.

The Coast Guard will dispatch Auxiliary crews directly and will coordinate their actions with local authorities.

Expected to cover an area of water from Oak Harbor to Edmonds and Admirility Inlet to Keystone, Whidbey Island Auxiliary boats and crews must be well equipped. Those volunteering boats for the program must have radar and a GPS system. Boat owners receive reimbursement for fuel used during training and rescue operations. The Coast Guard also provides survival suits and life vests.

Kevin Lee, an Auxiliary member who volunteered as a vessel safety examiner through Flotilla 17 in Anacortes, said he looks forward to getting certified as a coxswain for his own boat. He and his wife, Linda, are training with Leavitt and are hoping to get certified by March.

“I do it strictly for service work,” he said.

Ensign Whitcomb said she does not expect the First Responder program to conflict with the for-profit vessel assist services offered by private individuals. Auxiliary crews will not be ordered to sea by the Coast Guard for non-emergency disabled vessel calls.

Auxiliary crews will be on call for a week at a time once the First Responder program begins this spring. Leavitt said he is hoping to get a total of six boats with crews operating on Whidbey Island this year.