6.30am AEDT Sunday 05 January 2014
US Coast Guard ice breaker to assist ships beset in ice in Antarctica
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) has requested the US Coast Guard’s Polar Star icebreaker to assist the vessels MV Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long which are beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay.
The US Coast Guard has accepted this request and will make Polar Star available to assist.
The Polar Star has been en route to Antarctica since 3 December, 2013 – weeks prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay. The intended mission of the Polar Star is to clear a navigable shipping channel in McMurdo Sound to the National Science Foundation’s Scientific Research Station. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel and other goods to the station. The Polar Star will go on to undertake its mission once the search and rescue incident is resolved.
RCC Australia identified the Polar Star as a vessel capable of assisting the beset vessels following MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice overnight on 24 December, 2013. RCC Australia has been in discussion with the US Coast Guard this week to ascertain if the Polar Star was able to assist once it reaches Antarctica.
The request for the Polar Star to assist the beset vessels was made by RCC Australia to the US Coast Guard on 3 January, 2014. The US Coast Guard officially accepted this request and released the Polar Star to RCC Australia for search and rescue tasking at 8.30am on 4 January, 2014.
The Polar Star will leave Sydney today after taking on supplies prior to its voyage to Antarctica.
It is anticipated it will take approximately seven (7) days for the Polar Star to reach Commonwealth Bay, dependent on weather and ice conditions.
At 122 metres, the Polar Star is one of the largest ships in the US Coast Guard fleet. It has a range of 16,000 nautical miles at 18 knots. The Polar Star has a crew of 140 people.
The Polar Star is able to continuously break ice up to 1.8 metres (6ft) while travelling at three (3) knots and can break ice over six (21ft) metres thick.
RCC Australia will be in regular contact with the relevant US Coast Guard RCC at Alameda, California, and the Captain of the Polar Star during its journey to Antarctica.
Media Enquiries: 1300 624 633
www.amsa.gov.au/media
Related:
The ‘Clitanic’ Hot Sheet – News from the #SpiritofMawson fiasco
I confess to ignorance when it comes to breaking up ice however couldn’t it be either bombed or dynamited?
First, ice six feet thick is enormously strong. You could drive a tank out onto it. Ice two or three feet thick is enormously strong. Now imagine yourself out in the middle of the ocean (if you’ve ever been on an ocean or the Great Lakes). No land visible in any direction. Flat water in all directions. Now transform that water all to ice 1 to 6 feet thick. Somewhere at or over the horizon there is a ship that is stuck — some 12 to 15 miles (of solid ice) away. You could, with enough dynamite or a powerful enough bomb, shatter the ice in front of you to create a hole packed with huge ice chunks, which will promptly refreeze into solid but chunky ice. However, to get your ship to the hole the hole has to be right at your ship’s bow, as otherwise you are back to breaking the ice, and it is a bad idea to set of dynamite right next to your hull. It would also take a LOT of dynamite — tons of it — to clear out even a single ship-wide mile.
So no, this is not feasible. Nor is setting a fire on top, or any other scheme. That’s why this situation is so serious. There is absolutely no guarantee that either of the stuck ships will be freed by natural melt before winter comes, and lots of bad things could happen first, not the least of which is that ice expands as it freezes and can literally crush the hull of a ship that is trapped in the freezing ocean. So that even if it DOES melt, you just sink. Or the crew could run out of fuel or have problems with their heating or electrical systems and run a serious risk of freezing to death in the Antarctic “summer”. Or a big storm could come up that did in fact break the ice — into millions of mini-icebergs, each of them massive enough to cave in a hull, being flung about by 10 meter high waves, with the ships unable to do anything to save themselves.
So far they’ve been lucky — the weather has been relatively benign, no real disasters have occurred, nobody has died. But the risk of death is still very high for everyone involved. An icebreaker is literally designed to power up over an ice pack and uses its weight and a specially reinforced bow to break the ice and thrust it up to the sides to create a “clear” channel for ships. If it can reach the stranded ships, then a few small charges can clear them of the ice that has them immediately trapped, and they can follow along behind the icebreaker as it clears a path for them to open water. This is the first vessel involved that sounds like it is truly “adequate” for the purpose of navigating dicey water with a high probability of a major freeze — the rest of them truly didn’t have any real business being there, from what I understand.
It is pretty silly to ignore the risk of the unexpected when navigating the ocean. It is enormously dangerous on a good day with nice weather, and one of the many risks is that one can NEVER predict how long nice weather itself will hold up — squalls can blow up out of nowhere in less than an hour. A good captain will not risk his ship or crew or cargo or passengers anywhere that he isn’t very confident in his ship’s ability to handle the unexpected. One wonders just how this one got himself trapped.
rgb
oldleprechaun says: January 4, 2014 at 2:21 pm “In the Navy, we used to rag on the Coasties.”
I live in a traditional home for USCG once the Lighthouse service. A neighbor passed a year or so ago at about 90 years old. She walked across the ice to her husbands duty station and there bore and reared five children, with only the assistant keeper and his wife.
Go Coast Guard “Semper Paratus” . The “Polar Star” just came from a major over haul this past Spring. She spent part of the summer in the Arctic and left Seattle 3 December 2013 bound toward McMurdo in the Antarctica. In ice breaking mode she develops 75000 horse power from 3 Pratt & Whitney turbines. The Polar Star has a sister ship the Polar Sea that with the same overhaul we would have 2 major ice breakers. Tell Washington to spend the money. Obama’s vacations this past year cost more than the over haul would. You will hear people talk about the Russian Nuke Ice Breakers. The only trouble is they can not leave the cold water of the Arctic. It has to do with the cooling systems for the Nuke Reactors.
I do not know the credibility of this website: http://what-when-how.com/military-weapons/coast-guard-ships-military-weapons/
It reports:
John
Had a similar scenario in ’72. A Japanese breaker was stuck in the ice south of South Africa, we were tasked to standby in case they needed us. (CGC Southwind; formery AGB 280 Atka. Our current location was Rio De Janerio. Spent 10 days or on Ipanema. Don’t remember if I met “the Girl” or not, but the sites were glorius.
This fiasco should have a good clever name that will stick, maybe become a new word in the oxford dictionary. Any poets out there? “The dispirit of Mawson”? Also Turney’s Journey for Climate Change ($). I don’t want this man to slip away from all this.
We should set up a contest to see who comes up with the best day and time this all ends. get out the calculators and figure in the knowns and unknowns. 🙂 I’ll hold the wagers….of course… 🙂
Best comment: MajorMike
The scientist’s ship will now be renamed ‘Gore’s Folly”
Also best comment: Buckeyebob’s.
Not only should the lead ship (the one with the “questionable scientists” and “questionable journalists”) be billed for the total U.S. Coast Guard costs but also for the entire “carbon footprint” that these misguided fools caused/created!
Might as well have some fun: Time to drill some cores and blast.
If I were Captain of the Polar Star I wouldn’t pick up the leftist scientists until they disavow their religion believe in AGW causing warming scam.. If it were up to the left we wouldn’t even have ice breakers as they would think we don’t need them.
I am fed up now being nice about this whole predicament so im gonna say the unspeakable. I hope the ice crushes the vessels, they sink and it truly becomes real to these absolute morons, cause as it stands just now there gonna come back spewing the same garbage.
Ha haw !!!, we have a New “” ICE JAIL “”” air drop MRE “””
Maybe God is just trying to kill them all.
Abandon Ship til Spring and save millions.
I hope the USCG sends a bill to these morons for their “rescue”. They’ll do it at the drop of a hat for small boat idiots that embark on “a voyage of a fool” that requires them to be rescued by the USCG. Let the morons eat the rescue costs.
The Russians get stuck, the Chinese and Australians can’t help?? Now the Americans have to show you how it’s done ?? God bless the USA, gitterdun.
97% of the news agencies are calling them explorers or tourists. When they are actually global warming nuts looking for signs of melting. To the globalist controlled media — we are waking up at a record pace. We won’t fall for your mind control anymore.
Robert Brown says:
January 4, 2014 at 2:32 pm
“A good captain will not risk his ship or crew or cargo or passengers anywhere that he isn’t very confident in his ship’s ability to handle the unexpected. One wonders just how this one got himself trapped.”
rgb: The captain wanted to go, as told by an Aussie MP (Green Party of course), but had to lose precious hours while a land party managed to sink one of their classy snowmobiles and delayed getting bck to the ship. Everyone else, including the BBC and Guardian journalists and photographer, were on message and not letting this critical information out, but the MP naively spilled the beans.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/02/delayed-departure-of-several-hours-likely-caused-doomed-vessel-to-lose-race-against-the-weather/
Great. I bunch of global warming idiots go out stupidly, get caught in ice they didn’t forsee because they don’t believe in ice, and now us taxpayers have to bail them out.
Some guys stuck in the ice waiting for the climate to change?
Well, no; the climate change guys got rescued and the crew got left behind to repair the ship and get it out, when the weather allows.
Of course, leaving a warmista behind would have been a crime, like leaving babies or old people out in the cold.
M Courtney
grumpyoldmanuk says at January 4, 2014 at 12:45 pm
Apparently the ice-island being blamed for the pack-ice has been skulking around the coast since 1987-ish.
Interesting. Do you have a reference or a that?
It was reported here.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/turneys-iceberg-calved-in-1987/
God Bless the USCG..
WHEC Rush/Sherman. The USCG works hard all over the globe to help mariners in distress. I am proud to have been a COASTIE and a US sailor for 20+ years…
Again… God Bless the USA and USN