Part of the reason the Polar Star is still up and running is that it’s been borrowing parts from its sister ship, Polar Sea. One of the options that’s been discussed for increasing capabilities in the polar regions is to refit or refurbish the Polar Sea. Where are those discussions right now?

We’ve done a full material assessment of what it would take to reactivate the Polar Sea, recognizing this is a ship that has not been manned for more than five years now. We also did a comparison of how we reactivated the Polar Star and what those costs were. Now we had tremendous cost savings with the Polar Star, because it had a crew. We took parts from the Polar Sea because we have parts obsolescence – you just can’t go out anywhere to [buy parts and] reactivate these ships. So the Polar Sea has a different set of dynamics, because we don’t have a spare parts bin, if you will, to bring that up to speed.

The Crystal Serenity is going to transit where you don’t have that shore infrastructure in place. You don’t have ports where there are ships that can come to the rescue. You don’t have trauma centers. So where do you treat victims of a mass rescue who are now in ice-cold water, where survival times are measured in minutes? The remoteness of the environment – all of those factors are working against us. We don’t have resources pre-positioned out there to respond to a contingency.

So we’ve identified the current condition [of] the Polar Sea, and the deficiencies that need to be corrected, but we haven’t put a dollar figure on that yet. Certainly we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, but we can’t yet name an exact cost to reactivate the Polar Sea.

And then if you reactivate, you’re buying maybe 10 years of service life. You can use that investment instead to renew and acquire a new platform, which comes with 30, or as we’ve seen with these ships, 40 years of service life. So regardless, we’re going to reach a point in time where we have to recapitalize these assets. And quite honestly, I’m convinced that the time is now.

Last year – before the Crystal Serenity cruise through the Northwest Passage had been finalized – you stated publicly that you didn’t feel you could guarantee the Coast Guard was Semper Paratus for a mass rescue in the Arctic. The service’s Alaska District and the cruise ship’s operator have been working together for months to try to prepare for the cruise. What are some big-picture concerns that remain?

Well, today [Aug. 17] is a good day to have that discussion.

Crystal Serenity left Seward yesterday, right?

They did. But as I speak, we’re completing a rescue of 512 people off a Panamanian ferry vessel, the Caribbean Fantasy, that’s on fire. It’s currently aground about 2 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico. So we’ve got helicopters and airplanes. We’ve got boats. We’ve got good samaritans. We were able to evacuate all 512 people in just the last couple of hours.

The Crystal Serenity is going to transit where you don’t have that shore infrastructure in place. You don’t have ports where there are ships that can come to the rescue. You don’t have trauma centers. So where do you treat victims of a mass rescue who are now in ice-cold water, where survival times are measured in minutes? The remoteness of the environment – all of those factors are working against us. We don’t have resources pre-positioned out there to respond to a contingency.

So in a few days, up in Nome, Alaska, we’re going to simulate a mass rescue exercise. We’re going to have 250 role players play cruise ship passengers whose ship has sunk from beneath them. We will go through all the logistic challenges: How do you notify next of kin, where do you bring these people, and how do you get them to a trauma center where they can get medical care? So we’re going to stress the system in an exercise environment – but knowing at the same time we’ve got the real case, the Crystal Serenity with 1,000 passengers and 600 crewmembers, transiting these very same waters.