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
Would someone please have the U.S. or Canadian air forces drop napalm on this ice! Melt it and bust it up long enough for the ships to get out. Even regular bombs to break the ice.
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Gary Pearse,
TurneyGate
John
“I wonder if the Aussies will take the hint and acquire an ice-breaker man enough for the job?”
A new one is being built, but it is a bit difficult to persuade Australians that we really need ice-breakers. Ice is not much of a problem around the coasts of the mainland, or even Tasmania. And we frequently forget that we own a large chunk of Antarctica.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/people-in-antarctica/who-owns-antarctica
(Not that everyone agrees.)
Robert Brown:
“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.”
That isn’t the problem. The dangerous thing is if the wind starts the icefield moving and forming compression ridges. The power of a few million tons of moving ice, even though it moves slowly can crush almost anything.
Also for all these amurrcan boys venting their spleen on “chicoms” and russians, please remember that the only reason the chinese are stuck in the icefield is that they went in there in order to rescue a bunch of western ecoloons with a helicopter that isn’t built for overwater operations, and that the russians are stuck there because they wouldn’t leave the some of the said ecoloons on the ice to face the consequences of their stupidity.
I think our next USCG Polar Icebreaker should be named the USCG Cutter Al Gore
A new Author is born; with a new book entitled Turney’s Torment.
It was only a few days ago that I read that they had been rescued and that it was all over. Ha! The debacle continues. When Mr. Turkey gets back he needs to undergo some heavy grilling (no pun intended.)
bwah….ha…ha….ha…..ha……ha…..Global Warming gone wild those wild and whacky brainiacs that just KNEW the polar bears were drowning from fatigue as the ice was melting away hey Al Whore that settled science you touted so much how’s it working our for yah…..
“following MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice overnight on 24 December, 2013.”
ERRrrr isn’t that a bit of fibbing, considering the MV Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck because Prof Chris(tmas) Turkey’s crew was late returning to the ship?
Sounds like a wee bit of a cover-up to me.
Those of us in the northern hemisphere, let us keep in mind that it is summertime down under! Imagine what it would be like if it were winter time! Incredible!
This story just gets more interesting. Thanks for the great coverage.
Oh my god… Global warming is real, just because there is one incidence of cold causing something to happen does not excuse evidence of hundreds of glaciers all over the world in massive decline. You people that keep talking about climate change as a myth are total nut jobs.
buckeyebubba says: @ur momisugly January 4, 2014 at 1:02 pm
…..Why now just let then sit there until “global warming” melts their stupid asses out of there?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because the nut jobs have already been “rescued” and now they are getting the ships crew out of trouble. The Russian inquiry into this should be quite interesting, so keep an eye on Pravda and the Voice of Russia.
This reminds me of this photo montage of a crane lifting another crane AND a car out of the ocean… remember this?:
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/crane-tip6.jpg
Here is the full montage:
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/two-crane-accident-photos.shtml
There is an eerie similarity here, except it is worse.
A Russian ship(1) freezes in the ice copying a previous voyage that resulted in a sunken ship(2). The Russian ship received a failed rescue attempt by one ship(3), then another ship which also got stuck in the ice(4), which is now being rescued by a 5th ship.
5 ships now involved in a recovery of a fake news story.
There needs to be a beer drinking song for this.
donbarcomejr says:
January 4, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Yet another article on this that fails to mention that the mission was Global Warming! As for GLobal Warming “finally costing US taxpayers (per a comment),
You are jumping into the middle of a whole series of articles about this CAGW fiasco on this site so by this time the obvious does not need to be stated. The context of most all comments should have made this clear.
I hadn’t seen the US Ice breaker mentioned for awhile. Hope they can get those two ships clear quickly.
If those scientist can’t be rescued, I wouldn’t worry. After all, they can always eat the penguins.
All the comments about the US paying for the rescue and US taxpayers getting stuck with the bill are overlooking an important consideration or two. First, the Polar Star has been out of commission since 2006. Probably few of the original crew have returned. The new crew needs all the practice and training we can give them. They have already had a few months training in the Arctic, but not enough. Here is the perfect mission for them. A real rescue in real thick ice and on the route they are taking. It would take two to three times the cost to set up a mock training session. They should be able to free both ships in one to two days if the ice doesn’t get too much thicker than the 13 ft reported a couple days ago. Breaking ice and rescuing ships is their mission. This is excellent training for the mission. And it will actually free somebody trapped in the ice. We can afford this. It beats giving money to the Palestinians.
The second thing this will do is give the US some good publicity if they rescue the trapped ships. God knows we need some good publicity. Obama is incapable of it. All he has done is give America an almost black body like tarnish. America is still a heroic country. Let’s us cheer the Coast Guard on to rescue those ships and bask a little in American glory. It’s been a while.
The Faboutlaws last comment was a most refreshing comment I have seen in a long time !!
No smash mouth just good common sense to win back credibility for the good ole USA
Of which we live in !! Look MOM “”” no spin or slant by media !!! Or B,,, Sh,, good call
He knows what going on,,,, no quessing about the situation. ! Keep up the good work
“Let them study the melt until “local warming” sets them free.”
(Mario Lento at 2:09pm, today)
Yes! (but, not those little Turkey kids). Yeah, someone pointed out that such a sentence would be cruelty to the feebleminded, but their “reduced capacity” isn’t THAT reduced. Let the new 2-story Turney’s Remedial Anthropogenicalism Studies Hall be where they all get their “2 hots and a cot” for the next….. oh, I don’t know…… when will the cooling trend of the past 6,000 (?) years end? ……….
Have fun guys, oh, and here’s a book for you, “600 Ways to Cook Penguin.” Cheers! (which, in Australian, as far as I can discern from comments on WUWT, usually means: “Crap happens!” said with a {GRIN})
This would be a fitting sentence for ALL Envirostalinists — all the windmill investors who slaughter birds and bats… all the ethanol fuel pushers ruining boat and car engines… all those who publish l1es and call it “science,” …. all those who spend BILLIONS on “green” scams while telling a little girl who needs a lung transplant, “some people live and some people die,” (K. Sibelius) …. and we could think of many more, I’m sure.
Is Al Gore the cabin boy on the Polar Star
So the US Coast Guard is going to rescue the Russian and apparently Chicom vessels which got stuck trying to rescue a Russian vessel that got stuck while carrying paying passengers in an effort to suck more Global Warming dollars out of the United States.
Meanwhile back in the USA many terribly wounded veterans of the war in Afghanistan are going without needed medical care because Obama would rather spend the money on social programs. The press never reminds us that almost 3/4 of the casualties in Afghanistan have been suffered under Obama.
Where are our priorities ….. We know where our President is – hiding
PS148:17 He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?
It seems appropriate that now that the warmies have exercised their “oh save me…” and abandoned everyone to save their own skin, demonstrating their true yellow candy colors, that the USA, is going in to rescue the real men in all this…once again.
The Arctic farce was ALL about the science and nothing else. Furthermore, they were prepared and knew the risks. It’s true because I have just been told by Chris Turney in the Guardian below. Take a look:
But what do we have here?
Hmmmmmm! Turney did say: “This wasn’t a tourist trip. It was all about science”. Can you spot the number of scientists and compare them to the number of tourists? I betcha can.
Is Dr. Turkey being honest with himself?
PS 147:18 HE SENDETH OUT HIS WORD, AND MELTED THEM: HE CAUSETH HIS WIND TO BLOW, AND THE WATERS FLOW. They will get out when He says so!