COAST GUARD ISLAND, ALAMEDA, Calif. - The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a 420-foot polar icebreaker homeported in Seattle, reached the North Pole Monday as part of a joint international scientific endeavor. This is the Healy’s second visit to the Pole, and only the third time a U.S. surface ship has reached the same point.
Healy is deployed on the Arctic West-East Summer 2005 mission, along with the Swedish icebreaker Oden, to conduct sea floor mapping exercises and ice coring exercises in the Chukchi Sea and Canada Basin.
The Healy and Oden are scheduled to reach their next port of call, Tromso, Norway, later this month to offload the team of research scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Healy reached the North Pole for the first time Sept. 6, 2001 as part of a joint mission involving icebreakers from three separate countries.
The cutter is named for Capt. Michael A. Healy, a pioneer mariner for the Coast Guard in the late 1800s in the Alaska region. His accomplishments there laid the groundwork for Coast Guard Arctic operations centuries later: Protecting the natural resources of the region, suppressing illegal trade, resupplying remote outposts, law enforcement and search and rescue.
The Healy carries on the legacy of its namesake, combining a scientific and search and rescue platform with the resupply services that have become the hallmark of the Coast Guard's icebreaking fleet for over 100 years.
Healy and its 141-member crew are expected to arrive home in early November.
For photos of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy visit the following website: www.uscgpacificarea.com.
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