As a young man, I worked on the pack ice north of
Alaska for three seasons. I was well compensated to be there. For the life of me, I have no clue why someone would take their own expensive personal
equipment into such a harsh
environment.
One strike against
steel, if you happen to get iced in and the
boat has to over
winter, is that
steel goes through a nil ductility temperature at about -40C (which is equal to -40F, the spot where the two temperature scales happen to cross).
I.E. steel turns brittle and is easily cracked.
Aluminum doesn’t exhibit this property.
I designed mobile engineering test
equipment for use during the Arctic
winter, and had to consider this behavior. Most of our
work was air-mobile engineering using
Vietnam era Hueys (and their twin
engine civilian versions) to sling load our equipment onto the ice, so lite weight
aluminum was a necessity rather than an option. Still, having no issues with cracking of aluminum structural components was a very good feature.
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