World Photos by Lou Sennick Michael Stone, captain of the Alert, gives a tour of the crew’s quarters on the 125-foot-long cutter last week.

It was Saturday night on the Pacific, and the crew of the Alert was miles from shore when they encountered the first problem of their voyage. It was Jay, the third engineer. He had a toothache.

“His tooth was really hurting him something bad,” said Michael Stone, captain of the ship. “We had to do something.”

Stone recalled the incident recently, from the hull of the Alert, a former U.S. Coast Guard cutter and the oldest engine-powered ex-U.S. warship still operational. Stone looks the part of an ancient warship captain.

Weathered, deeply tanned skin? Check.

Interesting facial hair? Check.

Penchant for leather jackets and cigarettes? Check.

The dilemma at the time, said Stone, was that they had to be in Coos Bay by Monday. The Alert had seven volunteer crewmembers on this journey from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Bay Area of Oregon, and each had a ride waiting for him in Coos Bay. Each of them, with the exception of Stone, had land-locked lives in various parts of Oregon and Washington to resume to after this weekend voyage. It was imperative they reach Coos Bay in time to return to their day jobs.

There was no room in their schedule to go ashore and find a dentist.

“Jay kept going on about his tooth was bothering him,” said Stone. “Eventually I just said, ‘Well, Jay, we're gonna have to take that tooth out of there.'”

The Alert has seen a lot in its day. Since it was forged in 1926, it had busted rum runners, crossed the Panama Canal, patrolled the West Coast for submarines during World War II and, in 1981, appeared in “Gangster Chronicles,” the Emmy-winning mini-series about organized crime. At various times, the ship was armed with 3-inch guns, 20mm guns, machine guns, depth charges and various other types of firepower and munitions, which qualify it as a warship.

But never had the Alert witnessed an act of amateur dentistry. Not until that night. Stone's mercurial decisionmaking, as well as the steady hand of the ship's second engineer, Steve Zarko, allowed the procedure to be executed quickly. The crew got Jay thoroughly drunk on vodka, held him down on a table, did the deed with a needle-nose vice grip, and their progress up the coast continued unabated.

The rain-soaked docks of Coos Bay were reached last Monday afternoon, on schedule. The crew, unfazed by the dental incident according to Stone, disembarked and said their goodbyes to their captain, who would remain behind with the Alert, the ship he'd almost single-handedly resurrected through 18 months of elbow grease.

When Stone first came across the Alert in Richmond, Calif., it had been seldom used since 1990, and many of its systems had become inoperable with age and neglect. The ship's previous owner, Barry Brose, had purchased it from the Coast Guard in 1969, when it was decommissioned. Brose had entertained the notion of using the old warship as a retirement home, but when that idea was discarded, Stone said maintenance on the cutter all but stopped and it fell into disrepair.

This trip from San Francisco to Oregon is the farthest the ship had traveled in over a decade. Stone said the vessel, once homeported in Coos Bay, will stay here until about the end of April, he said, to relax, gather up some new crew members and give free tours of the ship. Next, he'll take it up to Portland to show it around at some summer boat shows. Then it's on to Port Townsend, Wash., his final planned destination, where on Nov. 30 the vessel will celebrate its 80th birthday.

“The idea is to get it repainted in Port Townsend,” said Stone. “It really needs it, and that's the only place on the coast that can handle a boat of its size.”

The voyage, then, is one of renovation, an attempt to prepare the old cutter for the final leg of its career. There were 33 other cutters created in 1926, Stone said, and the Alert is the only one that hasn't been “turned into fenceposts and razor blades across the country,” another way of saying it hasn't been turned to scrap metal. It is being groomed as a floating museum, to be observed and appreciated.

Stone said he wants to find a port where the vessel can have a permanent home and grow old with dignity. He envisions an Alert gift shop, a support group of volunteers keeping the ship in good repair, a community that cares about the ship and steady streams of school children taking field trips to tour it. Some waterfront communities have made offers for the boat already, he said, but none has met his criteria.

After the ship gets a new coat of paint slapped on it in Port Townsend, Stone said he doesn't know where he and the ship will end up. He has no concrete plans. All he knows is that until the day when the Alert settles down to become a historic display, he'll keep fixing it up and navigating the West Coast's waters, and the old warship's story will continue to thicken with the years.