[stormer]

Polar Star has a sister, the Polar Sea. The CG’s biggest icebreaker, the Healy, is here in Seattle.

[GeronL]

Is the Healy named after a TV character from the old I Dream of Jeanie ?

lol

[tanknetter]

Polar Star has a sister, the Polar Sea. The CG’s biggest icebreaker, the Healy, is here in Seattle.

The Polar Sea has been laid up for years since suffering a major engineering causality. I'm not sure what her status is right now, at one point the USCG wanted to strip her for parts (to support the Polar Star, which is only just recently back in service after a major multi-year overhaul) and dismantle her, but was ordered not to by Congress.

Healy's a very nice icebreaker, pretty much state of the art, but she's a medium one, not a heavy. She can continuously break up to about four and a half feet of ice at 3kts, but tops out at eight feet using backing and ramming. While the Polar Star and Sea can back/ram up to 21 feet.