Storis breaks the ice with Juneau residents, leaving plans for full transition in its wake
- Jasz Garrett
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
While some question the ship’s capability, the crew is forging ahead to overcome challenges
By Jasz Garrett and Natalie Buttner
Juneau Independent
The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Storis is adapting to life on a ship that was not built for them, with the help of its previous owners.
The long-awaited icebreaker set to be homeported in Juneau arrived for the first time on Wednesday.
The current crew of the Storis is a mix of 42 Coast Guard members and 22 contractors from Edison Chouest Offshore, the company that sold the Storis. This is the first time the Coast Guard has used a hybrid crew of civilian and Coast Guard personnel.
The contractors rotate every 30 days, with a new crew arriving Friday night before a Saturday trip from Auke Bay to downtown Juneau. The Storis was commissioned into Coast Guard service on Sunday morning near the downtown library.
According to Capt. Corey Kerns, when issues arise, the Coast Guard crew relies on the Edison Chouest contractors.
On Saturday, the ship got a late start due to an “engineering casualty,” according to Kerns. He said the controllable pitch propeller had an issue, but it did not threaten safety, and a decision was made to fix it after reaching downtown. A controllable pitch propeller enables the crew to adjust the angle of the blades, thereby reducing the propeller's speed capabilities.
This one-hour delay illustrated the role the Edison Chouest crew plays in Storis' operations. Kerns said he worked with his civilian captain counterpart in assessing the risk.
“He was confident in the ability for us to be able to still move despite the engineering causality, and so we came to that decision together,” Kerns said.
On Monday, the Storis left to continue its “learning” mission, which focuses on familiarizing the crew with the ship and refining their future mission. Until housing and infrastructure are ready, the ship will return to its temporary homeport of Seattle after completing its maiden voyage.
Passage to the Coast Guard
While the Storis may be the newest icebreaker, it’s not a new ship. It was previously known as the commercial vessel Aiviq, which was used for oil exploration.
The acquisition of the Storis drew opposition within the Coast Guard. During a congressional hearing in July 2016, Adm. Charles Michel said the vessel was not “suitable for military service without substantial refit.”
On Saturday, Cmdr. Phillip Baxa, icebreaking division chief in the Office of Cutter Forces, lauded the Storis as “one of the fastest acquisitions in Coast Guard history.”
A January 2025 ProPublica article examined the political motivations behind the purchase of the Aiviq. According to the article, Alaska Republicans Sen. Dan Sullivan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Don Young, and other politicians who advocated in favor of acquiring the Aiviq, received donations from Edison Chouest Offshore.
Murkowski toured the Storis on Friday to talk with the crew and express both her support and her concerns about the Coast Guard’s newest icebreaker. Sullivan attended the commissioning Sunday.
Congress appropriated $125 million to purchase the ship in March 2024, and the Coast Guard took ownership of the vessel in December. However, groundwork for the deal had been laid long before its acquisition.
“The funding did not just materialize and surprise us,” said Lt. Brian Mills, who participated in the negotiation process. “We knew that Congress was interested in the boat, and Edison Chouest was interested in selling or leasing the Coast Guard this boat.”
Mills noted the Coast Guard had done site visits of the Aiviq, now Storis, as early as 2016.
Since acquiring the ship, the Coast Guard has painted the hull red, installed military satellite communication systems, and equipped the Storis with four 50-caliber machine guns and an armory, according to Baxa.
He said it demonstrated its capabilities in Antarctica and other Arctic regions, breaking over six feet of ice.
The Aiviq first entered Alaska waters in 2012, contracted by Shell to move the drilling rig Kulluk. The ship suffered damage in an arctic storm and had to stop for repairs. On the return trip to Seattle, all four of its engines failed, ultimately causing the Kulluk to drift aground on Kodiak Island. The disastrous nature of that trip has cast lingering doubt on the Storis’s capabilities in unpredictable northern waters.
Baxa said several factors contributed to the Kulluk running aground. Since then, the Aiviq has become better understood and modified, he said.
“Since this ship was built in 2012, they've learned an awful lot,” Baxa said. “They've learned things from that incident. They've learned things when they deployed twice to Antarctica in support of Australian Science Foundation’s mission. And they've made mindful modifications to include various vent systems and other critical systems on board to make her more robust.”
Kerns said certain engineering flaws on the ship that led to the grounding of the Kulluk have been addressed. For example, the fuel vents have been raised to prevent them from becoming submerged. Kerns said he believes the grounding of the drilling rig was largely due to exceeding Aiviq’s capabilities in extreme weather conditions.
“Ships are designed to operate in certain conditions to a certain extent, and if you operate the ship past those constraints, you're going to find out what's going to fail first, and I think what happened there is they were operating, they were towing a large oil rig with this vessel in 40- to 50-foot seas,” he said.
The Storis has four direct-drive diesel propulsion engines. According to interviews ProPublica conducted with retired Coast Guard officers, the direct-drive propulsion system is more likely to be clogged by ice than the diesel-electric systems used by other Coast Guard vessels, including the icebreaker Healy.
Kerns said he has a history in ship design and helped rebuild two national security cutters. He said he feels “totally safe” aboard the Storis and there are no plans to replace the “robust” propulsion and electrical systems.
Baxa has been involved in the acquisition of the Storis and is responsible for the crewing and maintenance of the future fleet. He said icebreaking, search and rescue, and defense readiness would be the primary mission for Storis, but all 11 statutory missions of the Coast Guard are possible, including fisheries law enforcement.
Before pursuing these missions, Baxa said, the crew considers its maiden voyage on the Storis as an opportunity to learn.
“We want to be able to navigate safely, communicate effectively, and be present in the Arctic,” he said.
Baxa also managed a multi-million dollar contract to hire Edison Chouest Offshore civilians to help the Coast Guard crew become acquainted with their newest icebreaker.
Working together
While the six-month contract with Edison Chouest will end on Nov. 14, Baxa said the Coast Guard has the option to extend it for another six months. Both Baxa and Kerns anticipated that many of the Edison Chouest crew members would have their contracts extended.
Engineer Officer George Greendyk acknowledged the importance of working with the civilian crew to understand the engine systems.
“We have a full commercial engineering crew there that's pretty much with the contract specifically for experienced personnel on the Aiviq,” Greendyk said. “So everywhere we go, we have people that have seen something like this before.”
Baxa noted extending contracts with Edison Chouest will allow Coast Guard shoreside maintainers to continue learning from their private sector counterparts.
“Culturally, we do things differently, especially on the engineering side, so there's a little bit of friction there,” Kerns said. “But I think we all are mariners, and we speak that kind of same language.”
The Storis was built for the private sector, with staffing costs factored into its design. As a result, some tasks that are automated on the Storis would likely use manpower on other Coast Guard vessels, Kerns said.
For example, the walkways and railings on the outside of the boat are heated, preventing ice from building up.
“Whereas on the Coast Guard side, we would get out and break the ice like we would have to on the other icebreakers,” Kerns said.
At full staffing, the Storis will have approximately 84 crew members, according to Baxa. However, the Coast Guard anticipates placing more personnel in Juneau to support the Storis and its crew.
“We've got to not just build a pier, warehouses, we have to be mindful of all those things that need to be in place to support the Coast Guard families when they come here,” Baxa said.
He said the Coast Guard is looking at all possible options to support housing for the crew and their families.
He said that historically, it has taken eight to 10 years to build a homeport. The budget reconciliation bill passed in July contains $2.2 billion for new maintenance facilities nationally and $4.4 billion for shoreside facilities, including $300 million for Juneau.
“We gotta figure out that housing situation before we permanently move the vessel up here,” Baxa said.
Also enjoying Saturday’s rainy ride to downtown Juneau were about 80-90 guests, including members of the Juneau Navy League and friends and family of crew members. Some ate breakfast in the galley while rain pelted the windows. Others ventured outside to watch the ship being untied from the dock.
Student Engineer Joshua Dees and his wife, Angel, both from Texas, looked out at the rain smattering Auke Bay.
It’s Dees’ first visit to Alaska, his first Coast Guard assignment, and his first voyage on the Storis.
While he has previous military experience in the U.S. Army, he said he has never been out to sea. He volunteered to be on the Storis and had to compete for his position.
“I really wanted to be a part of the ice-breaking community,” he said. “It just seemed like such unique work that not a lot of people in the world get to do. You get to go to amazing places like Alaska, breaking ice, doing just really neat missions that other people are not going to get to see.”
He called a Friday night reception at the Juneau Yacht Club a warm welcome. Angel Dees said she loves the outdoors and went paddleboarding and saw the Mendenhall Glacier during her visit.
Machinery Technician Michael Underwood said his favorite mission is icebreaking for the same reason Joshua Dees looks forward to the adventure. Not everyone gets to see the North Pole and transit through the Northwest Passage in their lifetime, Underwood said. He first visited Juneau on the Healy, where he spent the last five years before coming to the Storis.
“I like Juneau a lot,” Underwood said as the ship passed Douglas Island. “I think coming up here will be real good. There’s a lot of good stuff in Alaska. People love Alaska, as far as Coast Guard guys. So I know it’s gonna take us a while to get here, but it’ll be nice when it finally happens.”
Like Joshua Dees, Kerns got his start as a student engineer. But he is also having a first experience aboard the Storis — he is now an icebreaker sailor, which he called the pinnacle of his career.
“The ability to be present guarantees your ability to maintain sovereignty,” the captain said. “And that's what we're trying to get at here in the Arctic. We need more icebreakers to be present in our waters.”
Charting the course for the future icebreaking fleet
According to a 2024 Coast Guard report, the Coast Guard should aim to have eight to nine polar icebreakers in the next 20 years to ensure a U.S. presence in the Arctic, especially as international interest in the area grows.
Congress recently allocated $4.3 billion for the procurement of Coast Guard polar security cutters and $3.5 billion for the procurement of Coast Guard Arctic security cutters. President Donald Trump’s budget bill will allow the Coast Guard to procure 17 new icebreakers, according to a press release.
“All the funding for those different platforms that we're getting through the Big Beautiful Bill, all of those are going to be new builds,” said Commander Lisa Hatland, who helped negotiate Storis’ acquisition. “So we are working to design these ships to the exact specifications that we want, and then partnering with the shipyards to then build them.”
Currently, the Coast Guard has three polar icebreakers, the Polar Star, the Healy, and now the Storis. Baxa said the Coast Guard also possesses 21 vessels conducting domestic icebreaking missions on the Great Lakes and on the East Coast.
Baxa said that looking forward, he would like to see plans for a replacement of the Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley in addition to obtaining new polar and Arctic security cutters. The Alex Haley was built in 1971 for the Navy and has been homeported in Kodiak since its Coast Guard acquisition in 1999.
“The Arctic has always been at the forefront of our mind,” Baxa said.
As national interest increases, Baxa said, he believes the Coast Guard and its partners in Alaska are in “a unique position to educate the rest of the nation on the value of the Arctic, the challenges in the Arctic, and frankly, the potential for the future.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356. Contact Natalie Buttner at natalieb@juneauindependent.com.
