As part of the evaluation, the ACV at Point Barrow was transferred to Traverse City, Michigan for refurbishment and then stationed at St. Ignace Coast Guard Station on Lake Huron. It sank on 23 November 1971 after only 26 hours of operation in Lake Huron, after the cabin was breached by a rock and the engine inexplicably failed, leading the craft to take on water and sink. After this sinking, one of the two San Francisco ACVs was then transferred to the Great Lakes. Another was transferred to the East Coast, where it performed aids to navigation survey/inspection and search-and-rescue operations on Chesapeake Bay, while the third remained in San Francisco Bay. The Chesapeake ACV was found to be particularly valuable for search-and-rescue operations in marshy or shallow waters. In the final Coast Guard evaluation, Commander Thomas Lutton wrote that "The ACV has dramatically and repeatedly demonstrated its capability to effectively perform a wide range of Coast Guard missions." However, the Coast Guard was in the middle of a large upgrade of its other boats and cutters at the time and so did not have the money to acquire ACVs. As such, the two surviving ACVs were transferred to US Army Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on 25 April 1975.