My oldest daughter spent several years on the POLAR SEA and I thought maybe we could help anybody out who might have some questions about the work onboard an icebreaker. She's an MST but did numerous other tasks, including helo ops, scraping and painting right along side the deck dept, things like that so if anyone is curious about life on a polar roller, let me know. If I don't know the answer to the question, I can always ask my daughter.

Laurie

One of my hopefuls is the Polar Sea (or Healy). I can only imagine the sights and adventures one will see on either.

It's definitely pretty exciting on the icebreakers. I'm not all that familiar with the Healy but I do read their updates and they do some awesome work. Also, the Polar Star is currently in the yard undergoing a major overhaul.....scheduled to be operational again in 2013. My daughter went on a pretty cool science mission late last year on the Polar Sea.....big polar bear study with some zoologists from the University of Wyoming. It was the very first time this type of bear study had been done from a ship. National Geographic had some videographers onboard and currently they are preparing a documentary about the trip. The producer told my daughter that the show could air as soon as early next year, which will be cool. I've seen a ton of photos from that trip.....they also had a world renowned photographer along and he has posted alot of his photos on his website....naturalexposures.com....but I can't wait to see the Nat Geo show about the trip.

Laurie

Also found out after I posted this that the CG has announced that Polar Sea has suffered a major engine casualty and will most likely be in maintenance status until at least the end of January 2011. They've been having engine problems for years, though....always had to cobble things together and occasionally swipe parts from Polar Star just to get underway, so this is not a surprise. Kinda sad that they let the heavy icebreakers get in such a state of disrepair....guess it just isn't a priority to keep them up and running.