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Three hundred and fourteen thousand kilometres later, the MV Asterix is home.

Canada’s leased supply ship has returned to Halifax after a first deployment that saw it spend 500 days at sea.

The 182.5-metre German-built container ship owned by private company Federal Fleet Services was converted by Quebec’s Davie Shipyard to provide interim fleet support to the Royal Canadian Navy until two planned replacements for the decommissioned Protecteur class can be launched.

The first of those is scheduled to be launched in 2023 from the Seaspan Marine Corporation yard in Vancouver.

“We pumped a lot of gas,” said Lt.-Cmdr. Trent Nichols, commanding officer of the MV Asterix’s naval replenishment unit.

Nichols arrived in Halifax aboard the MV Asterix, having joined her in Brisbane, Australia, for the voyage home.

Though the ship was gone for nearly two years participating in missions and exercises in the Pacific, off Korea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, its crews were constantly changing.

“We could not expect anyone to be gone for 500 days,” said Nichols.

In a first for the Canadian navy, the ship has a mixed civilian and military crew.

No down days on Asterix

Photographers along the Halifax waterfront focus on the MV Asterix during its last stint in Halifax Harbour on Dec. 28, 2017. - Eric Wynne

Federal Fleet Services has an office in Halifax and kept it staffed with 36 Canadian civilian mariners, including a captain, throughout the mission.

“The key thing for us was achieving 100 per cent availability,” said Spencer Fraser, chief executive officer of Federal Fleet Services.

“We didn’t have a single down day for the navy.”

Both crews were rotated out throughout its long voyage.

“There was a learning process,” said Nichols.

“There are navy ways to do things and civilian ways to do things but it’s been a homogeneous relationship.”

The MV Asterix will only be tied up in Halifax for two weeks before participating in NATO exercise Cutlass Fury in September off Nova Scotia.

Then it’ll be back to the Davie Shipyard in Quebec.

“It’ll be a tune up – you put her back in the garage and see what needs fixing,” said Nichols.

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