USCG Icebreaker ‘Polar Sea’, and Comments Sought on Wave Height Information
News of the USCGC Polar Sea might be a nice conversation icebreaker at your next cocktail party, and you may need to be ready to convert meters to feet when you’re farther than 60 miles offshore.
Offshore Waves MIght Appear Smaller
Is the US finally going metric? Sailor Jim Haussener sent us information on a request from the National Weather Service for comments from bluewater sailors about a proposal to change wave height analyses and forecasts from “feet” to “meters” for the High Seas text forecasts and the marine graphics (radiofax and internet). Interestingly the proposed change will only affect wave heights at 60 nm (111 kilometers) offshore or greater. Wave heights closer than 60 nm offshore will continue to be reported in feet. Note that this proposed change is only for the high seas and not coastal waters (within 60 nautical miles of the coast) or the Offshore Zone Waters. We assume this means when you go from 55 nm offshore to 65 nm offshore, incoming data would show waves that were eight feet are now 2.5 meters.
You can read more about the proposal in this Public Information Statement. You can add your comments here.
In the ’60s and ’70s the US tried to join the rest of the world in standardizing with the metric system for measurement. Kids were taught in school that 100 kph equaled 60 mph and that someday we’d all be operating in metric measurements. The effort to change finally ended in 1982 when President Reagan stopped the funding for the Metric Board. Hardware stores have rejoiced ever after since they sell both imperial and metric socket sets, doubling sales over hardware stores in the rest of the world.
Today, only three countries (the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia) retain the imperial system using feet, which came into existence loosely based on the length of the average person’s foot. Russell Coutts has explained that SailGP reports speeds in kph since, besides the US, it’s something everyone else in the world understands.
Comments will be received through Wednesday, October 16.
USCGC Polar Sea Arrives on the Bay
Sailor Steve Smith who sails his Olson 25 Synchronicity, sent in a couple of photos he took from Richmond as the USCGC Polar Sea headed for the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He took the shots yesterday morning as the Polar Sea was coming out of the San Francisco fog and under the bridge. He commented, “This heavy icebreaker has been non-functional since engine failure in 2010. Now she is being towed from Seattle to Mare Island for maintenance, then apparently will be sent to Suisun Bay. Who knew we needed an icebreaker in the Delta?”
According to Wikipedia the Polar Sea was launched in 1977 and was built to cruise through six feet (that would be 182.88 cm, or 1.8288 meters) of new hard ice at 3 knots and break ice up to 21 feet thick when the vessel backs up and then rams it. Back in 1981 it was actually able to exceed this by breaking up ice 40 feet thick.
In the middle of winter, February 11, 1981, Polar Sea reached Point Barrow, Alaska, and on August 22, 1994, it became one of the first two North American surface ships to reach the North Pole. Randall Reeves and Harmon Shragge (in our current Sightings secton) might appreciate its leading the way as they’re battling ice through the Northwest Passage this summer.
Since the icebreaker arrived in the middle of our local heat wave, we’re wondering if icebreakers are built with air conditioning, which, since the ship arrived under tow, may not be working anyway. We haven’t been able to find more information, but we are assuming the ship is joining what’s left of the mothball fleet in Suisun Bay.
After we posted this story we received the following information from the USCG Public Affairs Office:
Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea arrived at Mare Island Dry Dock on September 5, 2024. Following a brief dry dock for cleaning and inspection, the ship will be moved to the United States Naval Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay, CA to facilitate ongoing Coast Guard shore infrastructure investments at its previous berthing at Coast Guard Base Seattle. That major project includes pier construction and dredging to support Polar Security Cutters and other major cutters. CGC Polar Sea will still be accessible to the Coast Guard in supporting the continued operation of CGC Polar Star.
Thank you!
Very respectfully,
PACS Matt Masaschi
U.S. Coast Guard
Deputy Public Affairs Officer
Pacific Area Public Affairs
The POLAR class has to transit the Equator to get to Antarctica, so yeah, they have air conditioning. She goes on the blocks at Mare Island Monday the 9th. And yes, the MARAD Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet is her destination.
Latitude 38 editor John Riise wrote in to add some more to the Polar Sea story, “It’s correct that Polar Sea has been inactive since 2010, but her sister — and the only remaining CG ‘heavy’ icebreaker Polar Star — has a connection to Latitude: the daughter of Sachi and ‘Captain Kirk’ of Captain Kirk Charters was so enthused about cruising when she was younger (on the family’s SC 50 ‘Bay Wolf’) that she joined the Coast Guard Academy, trained (partially) on the Coast Guard ship ‘Eagle,’ and is (or was as of last year) an officer aboard ‘Polar Star,’ which is homeported in Seattle. One of its missions is to head south and break up the ice so ships can get in and out of McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Miya was featured in a sidebar in May ’20 Changes (https://www.latitude38.com/issues/may-2020/#94) in Latitudes and again in Changes in Latitudes Cruise Notes in June of 2022(https://www.latitude38.com/issues/june-2022/#95).
According to Wikipedia, the only other operational icebreaker is the CG “medium” icebreaker USGGC Healy, which, weirdly, is actually larger — though lighter displacement — than Polar Star.
J
Your article on changing from imperial to metric unit bases when reporting wave heights brings out a key difference between the systems of measurement.
Nautical Miles is a naturally correct way of expressing travel distance over the surface of the Earth. One nm equals one minute of arc (1/60th of 1 deg) along a great circle. So the reference to applying only beyond 60 nm from shore means something to this navigator…it only applies once you are 1 deg of true angle from the shore.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/nautical-mile-knot.html
If you told me that it applied 111 km from shore, I wouldn’t have necessarily associated that with any specific angle…which is what navigators use!
Sometimes a base unit measurement was designed for a specific purpose, and deserves to retain that function. Nautical Miles to be used in navigation is one of these.
As a space navigator, I expect to need to convert between common units of Time, Length and Mass…the primary fundamental units of Newtonian physical properties, there are four more fundamental units related to electromagentics, temperature, light, and nuclear mass. Very rarely are the accepted base measurement unit value for any of these defined quite as nicely as the Nautical Mile was.