You think you hate it now just wait until you put it on

Its cold in the arctic, one must dress warm

What do you mean it doesn't run on twisted up rubber bands and gerbils in wheels?

After an extensive two hour tour of the five engine compartments on board this massive cutter I have come to the conclusion that this ship must be some kind of an engineering master piece and the fact that more stuff on this boat doesn't break all the time is no less than a marvel. There are so many moving parts interconnected and so much horsepower to allow this boat to keep trucking even when something breaks. The Polar Sea has six 16 cylinder engines capable of producing some 18,000 shaft horsepower and three gas turbines in reserve for breaking thick ice capable of producing 75,000 shaft horsepower. I was amazed and really impressed with the machinery technicians onboard.

Ice, we ain't scared of no ice

This photo was taken last night from the bridge when we came across our thickest patch of ice yet. I heard an unconfirmed report that the ice was 8 ft. thick. We broke through though. I spent the rest of the night listening to ice crush around the hull, and felt my bed shake like I was I stuck in an all hours earthquake.

Why say no when it feels so good to say yes!

As a bold act of declaring, "We know what we are doing," the cooks from the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea garnished this mornings doughnuts with salty, smoked bacon. Bacon, the versatile meat product that is, is often found in the meals served aboard the Polar Sea. When some people complained about the overabundance of bacon goodness the cooks lashed out in a Twisted Sister moment of, we are not going to take it, and put the bacon on the
doughnuts. Take that bacon haters.

View From The Top

Learning At Sea

Ten blue suited individuals are sitting on the mess deck aboard the red-hulled ship. In front of them is Erin Sheridan, the young blonde teacher in jeans and a t-shirt with small polished, stone medallion hanging by a natural fiber cord around her neck. She is teaching about climate change on the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea, homeported in Seattle. She is helping her young uniformed students gain an education that will provide for them for the rest of their lives.

Before going afloat and teaching Coasties, Sheridan taught experiential education in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years. She taught skills such as sailing and kayaking, experiences that garnished team building. When it was time to move on in her career she looked for interesting career opportunities around the United States and discovered Vincennes University programmed tailored to the needs of Coast Guard personnel serving at sea.

Given her maritime lifestyle and adventure-seeking personality she applied, and has been aboard the cutter since it left Seattle in late August.

Sheridan teaches four courses, five hours a day, five days a week. Those lessons include: Intro to earth science, algebra, intermediate algebra, and oceanography.

Some of her students are working toward a specific degree others are taking general college courses in the hopes that they may one day be applied to toward a degree program.

Teaching aboard a moving a cutter has its challenges, and Sheridan said that some times her class get interrupted or some times her students have to miss class because of watch.

“You have to be flexible,” said Sheridan. “You never know when an alarm is going to go off or they call a drill in the middle of your class and all of your students have to leave at once.”

“So far this has been an great experience,” said Sheridan. “This is an awesome boat,” she added.

At the end of the cruise in early Dec., Sheridan will return to her home in St. Augustine, Florida.

We will just pull over at the next parts store.

The Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea, almost 400 feet of icebreaking steel and charged by engines capable of producing 20,000 horsepower, was steered through the ice laden waters of the Arctic Ocean by a seaman with a pair of vice grips.

It was 2 a.m. Saturday when the bridge officer noticed that the Polar Sea was steering a course nearly 26 degrees off from the ordered course. The engineer of the watch was immediately contacted and a broken differential gear was discovered upon inspection.

Rather than having to abort the Sea’s current mission, transporting groups of various scientists to the Arctic icepack, the engineering department worked together with the icebreaker’s sister ship, the Polar Star, moored in Seattle, and arranged to have an identical gear flown to the closest land point, Barrow, Alaska.

While the part was in transit, a pair of vice grips served as a temporary solution to the steering causality.

“The vice grips worked because they acted as a lever for the operator to control the hydraulic arm, which controlled the rudder,” said Ensign Andy Perodeau, a machinery officer aboard the cutter.

The vice grip operator received steering instructions from the bridge through headsets, which provided the communication link.

“If something breaks up here in the Arctic we have to figure out how to fix it, and some times have to be really imaginative,” said Capt. David Vaughan, commanding officer of the Polar Sea.

Once the part arrived, a helicopter was deployed from the ship to receive the gear in Barrow. The gear is on board, and the cutter and crew are working to carry out the scientific mission.