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The Coast Guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent has freed innumerable ice-locked vessels, explored the unseen depths of the Arctic bottom and hosted prime ministers and the world’s top Arctic scientists. Recently, however, the bright red workhorse of Canada’s marine Arctic presence has been doing not much of anything. For the past two weeks, the 111-metre icebreaker has been stranded off the Nunavut coast by a loose propeller nut.

Since Sept. 27, the ship’s bobbing red form has been a familiar sight from the shores of the 1,500-person Arctic hamlet of Cambridge Bay.

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The ship was stranded by a maddeningly simple malfunction: A nut on the centre propeller that was knocked out of place by no more than a few inches.

Nevertheless, with the extra demands placed on propellers in icy waters, “It is surprising that this does not happen more often,” Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary told the Iqaluit-based Nunatsiaq News.