'Like a perpetual car crash': The captain of the US's only working icebreaker describes a 'treacherous' trip north

• Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star is on the first wintertime Arctic deployment by a Coast Guard cutter since 1982, reflecting the service's ongoing effort to build capability and expand its presence in the region.
• "We're going to head out there and just continue to present an overt presence and let the possible bad actors know that the Coast Guard is on scene," the ship's commanding officer told Insider.

Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star left Seattle on December 7 for the first wintertime trip to the Arctic by a Coast Guard cutter since 1982.

On Christmas, it reached a point just above 72 degrees latitude, the farthest north a Coast Guard ship has sailed in winter.

Getting there was no easy task, the ship's commanding officer told Insider on Tuesday.

"The North Pacific and the Gulf of Alaska, [and] the Bering Sea in the winter are absolutely treacherous," said Capt. William Woitrya.

There were 15-foot seas in the Gulf of Alaska, and even though Polar Star can handle 40- to 50-foot seas, "anything more than about 10 feet and the crew is basically incapacitated with seasickness because of how much the ship is rolling and rocking and bouncing," Woitrya said. "So that was just a heck of a start."

Polar Star typically sails to Antarctica in January to cut a channel through miles of ice for resupply ships heading to the McMurdo Sound research station. That trip was cancelled this year due to COVID-19.

Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, the US's only other icebreaker, suffered an engine failure as it sailed to the Arctic in August. The 44-year-old Polar Star, which has its own history of breakdowns, was then tapped for the trip.

Polar Star, a heavy icebreaker, can break ice up to 21 feet thick, but operating in the Arctic at this time of year "is challenging, even for us," Woitrya said.

"In the summer, the ice is a little bit softer ... and the ship moves through it and there's like a shushing sound, like walking through tall grass, where it rubs down the side of the ship," Woitrya said. "This year [it] was hard and crunchy. It sounded like a perpetual car crash, just twisting metal screeching and shattering going, all just dragging down the whole of the ship, absolutely terrifying."

January is summer in Antarctica, which means warmer temperatures and "perpetual daylight," but Arctic winter means almost "perpetual darkness," Woitrya said. Around 72 degrees North, there was "about an hour of ... like pre-dawn [light] every day."

Temperatures were in the -20s and windchill reached -50 degrees, but the wind not only strips away heat; it moves the ice. Antarctic ice is thicker but relatively static, Woitrya said. "In the Arctic, you can go a few miles ... and look behind you, and there's nothing that even resembles a channel or any evidence that you were there."

'The Coast Guard is on scene'

The US military is increasingly focused on the Arctic, which a changing climate is expected to make more accessible for military and commercial activity.

The Coast Guard released an Arctic strategy in 2019, which noted that "the renewal of global strategic competition has coincided with dramatic changes in the physical environment of the Arctic."

The Navy released its own Arctic strategy on Tuesday, as the Polar Star sat in Alaska's Dutch Harbor on a resupply stop.

This trip is an opportunity to train and develop proficiency "so that we are ready to operate in the Arctic year round, not just now, but next year and in the decades to come," Woitrya said.

Early in the trip, the ship spent several days patrolling the maritime boundary south of Bering Strait - "an overt presence, monitoring the Russian fishing fleet" and "making sure there was no illegal fishing going on in US waters," Woitrya said. US leaders have called illegal fishing a worldwide challenge.

Russia is seen as a long-term competitor, and there are signs of tension in the region, but the Coast Guard has an "excellent relationship" with Russia's border guard, Woitrya said, echoing other service officials.

"But both of our agencies really suffer from a lack of resources and an ability to be in all of the places that we need to be all of the time that we need to be there," Woitrya added, calling this deployment "an opportunity to put another piece on the chess board."

In addition to patrols, the months-long mission will include further technology testing and scientific research on an environment that has been "under-sampled" because of the difficulty of operating there, Woitrya said.

"We've got some [remotely operated vehicles] on board. We're deploying some buoys and taking water samples for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, so that they can better understand the physical properties of the ocean up here at this time of year."

The curvature of the earth at the Poles affects navigation and communications systems, a particular challenge for the military. Despite some "degradation," Polar Star maintained its primary internet downlink up to 72 degrees North, which Woitrya called "a great relief."

The service is working to bolster that communications capability, Woitrya added. "In fact, we were testing a new satellite constellation that [the Defense Department] has in service on this mission, but, again, once we went north of the Arctic circle, the satellite was only over the horizon for a couple hours a day, so it really limited our ability to take advantage of that."

The Coast Guard plans to build three more icebreakers in the coming decade, with work on the first starting this year. This deployment will help prepare crews who will operate in the high latitudes. The ships themselves will be designed to facilitate those operations.

The new icebreaker "is going to have a climate-controlled bay with an overhead door that's going to keep the small boats out of the weather and the environmental conditions, and that's going to be a huge upgrade and an operational multiplier that's going to make us more effective in these really cold environments," Woitrya said.

The Coast Guard has long been present in the waters around Alaska, but like the Navy, which is more active in the North American Arctic and the European Arctic, the Coast Guard wants to make both its presence and capability known in a region where more ships from more countries will be spending time.

Polar Star's deployment will reflect that, Woitrya told Insider.

"We're going to head out there and just continue to present an overt presence and let the possible bad actors know that the Coast Guard is on scene," Woitrya said. "We're also really representing the United States and defending our sovereign interests and our resources throughout the region."