George Herbert said, “Every mile is two in winter,”
and for the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Sturgeon Bay, those miles are doled out
on the Hudson River, ice floe by ice floe, from the George Washington Bridge to the fuel
docks of Albany, NY and every perilous bend in between.
January
saw the Northeast beset by bitter cold, blinding snow and dangerous ice, much of which 
quickly lodged between the banks of the Hudson River, a vital
shipping route for the transport of heating oil and gasoline to distribution centers in
Albany. All the New England states rely on tug and barge traffic getting through to those
distribution centers. For that to happen the ice must be broken, and a path must be
cleared. There are few ships better built to
achieve those ends than the Sturgeon Bay and her sister ships in the 140-foot
Bay-class cutter line.
Sturgeon
Bay is a state-of-the-art icebreaker, and its chief mission is icebreaking up and down
the Hudson River. By using a specialized
“bubbler” system, that forces air and water between the hull and ice, the cutter
improves icebreaking capacity and efficiency by reducing resistance against the hull and
reducing horsepower demands. The result of
all this technology and engineering is a 2,500-horsepower single shaft diesel pushing a
662-ton monster that can hit top speeds of nearly 15-knots and break through a continuous
30-inches of ice.
Commissioned
in 1988, the Sturgeon Bay homeports in Bayonne, NJ, but spends the bulk of 
December
through March maintaining a safe navigational track from New York City to Albany. Keeping the ice clear also allows the cutter to
continue its homeland security, search and rescue and law enforcement missions, while
keeping commerce flowing, allowing ferries to continue operating, and helping to reduce
potential flooding during the spring, because, although specially designed for
icebreaking, the cutter also performs these many other duties, including acting as an aids
to navigation response unit: breaking buoys out from ice, repairing damaged buoys,
building light towers, and refueling lighthouses.
In
the spring and summer, the Sturgeon Bay conducts offshore fisheries law enforcement
patrols from New York to Maine, and the crew spends a portion of each summer restoring one
of the many lighthouses maintained by the Coast Guard along New England. The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., also
relies on the Sturgeon Bay for its cadet summer training program.
The 140-foot Bay class Cutters, named after American bays,
operate mainly in the U.S. Northeast and Great Lakes.
In all, there are seventeen cutters of diverse sizes breaking ice in the New
England area and keeping navigation channels and harbors open to facilitate the flow of
commerce, especially the delivery of home heating oil, 90 percent of which enters the
Northeast by waterborne transportation. So, if you’re a New Englander
happy to be out of the cold, the crew of the Sturgeon Bay probably had something to
do that warm feeling you get coming home.
