A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter made an emergency landing on a golf course on Staten Island Sunday morning.

Authorities say around 11 a.m., the pilot made an impromptu, precautionary landing onto Fairway Six of the Richmond County Country Club golf course. 

Smoke and fumes had filled the cockpit. 

Coast Guard officials say a faulty alternator was to blame. It's unclear where the helicopter was coming from.

It later took off headed to its home base at the Atlantic City Air Station.

We talked to the pilot of aircraft who said his crew was doing a routine patrol when they began to smell smoke from the cockpit.

"We also lost our flight control, part of our flight control system as well as lost our electrical system. So that indicated we had a fire up there and things were getting bad pretty quick," said Lt. Shawn Shauvot. "Initially we were trying to get into Newark. We knew we weren't going to make it so we started getting the other indications so what we could do to get it down as quickly as possible as safely as possible...With this we had the chance to do one sweep as we made the left turn and then just kind of took it in. We had all of us looking outside to make sure there were no obstacles and put it down."

No injuries were reported.