North Vancouver – Seaspan Shipyards (Seaspan) have signed a contract with Newfoundland-based Genoa Design International to continue providing design expertise on the Canadian Coast Guard’s new heavy polar icebreaker.
Under the contract, Geona will provide design guidance, growing their local workforce to more than 100 naval architecture and marine systems designers. Work will continue into the vessel’s build phase, already underway at Vancouver Shipyards. Additionally, Genoa will lend their technical leadership and program support essential to advancing the nation’s first built-in-Canada heavy icebreaker in more than 60 years.
Measuring 158 metres long and 28 metres wide, Seaspan’s polar icebreaker will be incredibly complex, designed to operate self-sufficiently in the high-Arctic year-round. It will play a critical role in enabling the Canadian Coast Guard to transit and operate on more than 162,000 km of Arctic coastline.
The capabilities of this Polar Class 2 icebreaker will help sustain a 12-month presence in Canada’s North in support of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, high-Arctic science (including climate change research), Indigenous Peoples and other northern communities, and the ability to respond to major maritime emergencies including search and rescue. It will be able to accommodate up to 100 personnel, and, as one of the only Polar Class 2 vessels in the world, will be able to operate farther north, in more difficult ice conditions and for longer periods than any icebreaker in Canada to date.
This built-in-Canada ship will be the seventh vessel designed and built by Seaspan under the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS). It will also be the fifth Polar Class vessel to be built for the CCG, and one of up to 21 icebreaking vessels overall that Seaspan is constructing.
(Image of artist rendering of polar icebreaker)