Seen, and soon to be seen, off West Seattle: Canada & U.S. defenders

| Seen at sea | West Seattle news

First, from the “seen off West Seattle” file:

CANADIAN VISITORS: That photo by Jim Borrow shows the Renard (58), which along with Wolf (59) is visiting Seattle from Esquimalt, B.C. Both are Orca-class Royal Canadian Navy Training Tenders.

And from the “soon to be seen” file:

USCG HOMECOMING: Thanks for the tip that the U.S. Coast Guard heavy icebreaker Polar Star is due back in Elliott Bay this afternoon after three months away on a mission to Antarctica. Its official arrival has been announced by the USCG as midmorning tomorrow but, following up on the tip, we note via the MarineTraffic.com tracker that it’s off North Kitsap right now and headed this way.

msea March 11, 2019 (10:15 am)

Regarding our country’s heavy ice breakers: one of my Coast Guard friends mentioned that the US does not currently have self rescue capabilities if our last remaining heavy ice breaker, Polar Star gets into trouble in Antartica. We’d have to rely on Russia to bail us out. $750M had been earmarked for a new heavy icebreaker but the funding was reallocated to build the wall. We are putting the safety of our service members in jeopardy as was evidenced with a recent fire on board where their own country couldn’t come to their aid. Just last week the Senator Murkowski was crowing about funding more ships but she failed to mention that the funding allocated to the project is $100M less than the original $750M and this won’t even get us close to the capacity we need, which the Coast Guard estimates at six ships. Shameful. https://www.stripes.com/news/coast-guard-icebreaker-funding-reallocated-to-us-mexico-border-wall-1.540857

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