On Aug. 18, 2020, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (WAGB-20) suffered a fire in the ship’s main propulsion motor while on a deployment to the Arctic. The Healy was taken to a dry dock in Vallejo, California, for repair. A replacement motor was stored at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore. The spare motor was removed from its storage facility, craned onto a barge and sent through the Panama Canal to the dry dock. Installation of the propulsion motor took approximately a month and required removal of the ship’s dual hulls to complete. U.S. Coast Guard video by Petty Officer 2nd Class Jordan Akiyama and Senior Chief Petty Officer NyxoLyno Cangemi
An interesting video if you have not seen it before. Shows replacement of one of Healy’s main propulsion motors after a fire. Fortunately the Coast Guard had bought a spare when the ship was built. Work was done in Vallejo, CA, in the same yard that has been working on Polar Star.
Thanks to Bill for bringing this to my attention.Β
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
I saw that late last night for the first time and thought “I should probably send this to Chuck but since it’s a year old he’s probably already done a post about it that I missed”
A great reminder that when fixing large surface vessels it’s often going to require great big damn holes to be cut all the way through to the problem
Original DVIDS link :
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/774745/us-coast-guard-cutter-healy-propulsion-motor-replacement-timelapse
@W B Young, Thanks, I added the DVIDS caption to the video. Always good to give credit to the original source.
I did do a search to see if I had previously posted this, but if I had, I could not find it
If all our Icebreakers are going to Vallejo to have their yard work done, why do we plan to homeport the new ones in Seattle?
I wonder if the motor which caught fire and was removed will now be rebuilt, to retain the spare availability? Obviously, icebreaking is tough on motors (and other propulsion components), thus a redundant spares inventory is important or one ends up with a big, powerful icebreaker sitting dockside, considered too expensive to repair and used for spare parts itselfβ¦ π Of course, with Healy, she is a class of 1, thus no second ship to scavenge parts from, thus even more important to keep redundant spares in inventoryβ¦
I remember this from last year when it was discussed.
I too thought I had saw it discussed here. Maybe it was the War Zone or Reddit??
One little tidbit of the story that I recall, that I would love to know more about is the spare motor in Baltimore. I could have swore that I read somewhere, that the spare motor was purchased just in case back when the ship was built and was stored at the CG Yard all these years. And that they had actually built a building around the motor and it was stored in that building somewhere on the base?? I wonder if someone who knows more about this part of the story could link us to an older satellite picture of where it was stored on the base?
I could only imagine years worth of OOD’s and JOOD’s checking in and during their break-in’s being told, oh that building over there – that has a spare motor for the Healy in case they ever need one!
And more importantly, who was actually smart enough back then to actually have bought a spare motor and how did they justify it – the CG is not exactly the most spendthrift agency out there – actually, the CG is the opposite of it. Maybe it was end of year funds – no excess office chairs were bought that year!! LOL
Maybe it was here -https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/crippled-icebreaker-healy-to-get-complex-rebuild-huge-engine-heads-to-panama-canal/