Coast Guard icebreaker Healy cancels fall voyage to Arctic Ocean after mechanical problem

The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy will not sail to the Arctic Ocean this year.

The Healy is one of only two active Arctic icebreakers in the Coast Guard’s fleet and had been scheduled to return to service this year and sail to the Arctic after an overhaul, but during a post-shipyard voyage in July, it suffered a severe mechanical breakdown off the coast of Washington state. 

The website gCaptain, which reported on the incident at the time, cited unnamed sources who said one of the ship’s crankcases had exploded. 

In July and again this week, the Coast Guard declined to answer questions from the Beacon asking to confirm that account. 

In a written statement, a Coast Guard spokesman said only, “The Coast Guard continues investigating the cause of the engineering casualty onboard Coast Guard Cutter (CGC) Healy. CGC Healy will not complete its planned 2026 high-latitude summer mission. However, the Coast Guard is developing repair plans and evaluating the feasibility of additional operations.”

The Coast Guard did not answer multiple followup questions, including how long the Healy’s repair will take and whether the Coast Guard will seek to have another icebreaker take the Healy’s place.

This is the second major problem aboard the Healy in two years. In 2024, an electrical fire aboard the ship canceled its fall voyage into the Arctic. 

Without the Healy, the Coast Guard’s sole Arctic icebreaker is the former oilfield services ship Storis, which was commissioned into Coast Guard service last year and is not yet fully operational to Coast Guard standards.

The heavy icebreaker Polar Star is operational but is committed to service in Antarctica and is thus unavailable for Arctic service.

The Storis is less effective in ice than the Healy, which has reached the North Pole several times, and does not have dedicated science lab space, as the Healy does. 

Earlier this year, the Coast Guard awarded construction contracts for 11 new icebreakers of two different designs. The first four ships — two from each design — are being built in Finland and are scheduled for delivery by 2028. 

In the meantime, the Coast Guard has been using non-icebreaker ships in the Arctic. This summer, the CGC Munro monitored two Chinese research ships operating in the Arctic off Alaska.