USCG’s new ‘Icebreaker’ Proving Herself

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Storis (WAGB 21) The USCGC Storis (WAGB-21) is scheduled to return to the service’s icebreaker barn in Seattle after a 36-day, 4,800-mile patrol in the Bering Sea, her second since entering service last August. The 360-foot/15,000-ton third-hand former oilfield support vessel M/V Aiviq seems to be proving herself even though she is really more icebreaker-adjacent, being a Polar A3 class ship capable of busting through just one meter of ice continuously. As noted by CG PAO, Storis’s recent patrol “refined the crew’s ice piloting and navigational skills, developed baseline performance parameters for ice operations, and conducted a first-in-kind re-fueling exercise with USCGC Waesche (WMSL 751).” The two vessels executed a pierside Fueling at Sea (FAS) exercise in Dutch Harbor during the patrol, essentally showing Storis could be used as an offshore fuel-replenishment barge, demonstrating the breaker’s “unique capability within the National Fleet to sustain forces…