US Coast Guard Ice breaker asked to assist Antarctic rescue

Watts Up With That? ^ | January 4th, 2014 | Anthony Watts

[Third Person]

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 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.

[Nuc 1.1]

...the most professional of the three seagoing services.

Chuckles, that'll be the day.

[cloudmountain]

Nice pic of Gore...better on to have the flames coming out of his butt.

[tanknetter]

Do they normally just use their icebreakers for opening up US ports and larger waterways, or do they frequently get deployed to foreign waters to deal with ice issues?

The US has been sending USCG icebreakers to both Antarctica and the Arctic for decades now. Sometimes to support US research operations (like keeping the shipping channels open to the scientific mission at McMurdo), sometimes to actually conduct them (the Polar Star, her sister the Polar Sea and the newer Healy all have extra space and facilities for taking a couple/few dozen scientists/researchers along with them).

And, actually, the USCG pretty much spans the globe. They used to occasionally deploy the Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters with USN carrier groups, and have had a major presence in the Persian Gulf since at least the first Gulf War ...

[tanknetter]

Polar Star has a sister, the Polar Sea. The CG’s biggest icebreaker, the Healy, is here in Seattle.

The Polar Sea has been laid up for years since suffering a major engineering causality. I'm not sure what her status is right now, at one point the USCG wanted to strip her for parts (to support the Polar Star, which is only just recently back in service after a major multi-year overhaul) and dismantle her, but was ordered not to by Congress.

Healy's a very nice icebreaker, pretty much state of the art, but she's a medium one, not a heavy. She can continuously break up to about four and a half feet of ice at 3kts, but tops out at eight feet using backing and ramming. While the Polar Star and Sea can back/ram up to 21 feet.

[Figment]

The Polar Star can break ice up to 21 ft think. I don’t believe the Chinese ship was that capable

[skinkinthegrass]

!

[Ramius]

USCG Polar class breakers have been servicing ice-bound ports in Antarctica for decades. I was stationed on the Polar Sea back in the mid-80s. Those ships have some amazing capabilities. The article is a little conservative.

Yes, they can easily steam continuously through ice that’s six feet thick. But by backing and ramming they can break ice far thicker. 20 feet for sure... But in ice breaking a lot depends on the age of the ice. Ice gets harder the older it is. Some of that ice has been frozen since the Romans were in Britain. That stuff is harder than concrete. Stuff that’s freshly frozen will break easier.

The Polar Sea got stuck at one point on an ice ridge that was 70ft thick. Ice ridges happen were two massive sheets come together. Like tectonic plates they mash into one another, or subduct, or whatever... And create massively thick ridges that go both up and down... Seriously not something you want to ram into. But it happens. We had to go out on the ice and bury ice anchors behind the ship and winch ourselves back off it. :-)

The Polar class are seriously powerful breakers. Normally they run on a diesel-electric combo... But when serious power is needed they’ve got three gas turbines that direct-drive the three shafts through a mind-numbing reduction gear. The props are sixteen feet in diameter, stainless steel, variable pitch. The shafts keep turning at a constant RPM, and forward-reverse and speed is handled with pitch on the props. The brute force possible with just a slight pitch is something to behold.

[Figment]

Go with wiki, they are the authority on everything

[jaz.357]

We just wanted to see the polar bears drowning! Now are trip is ruined!

Charge ALGORE for the USCG! He has BILLIONS because of this hoax!

[fso301]

The Polar Star can break ice up to 21 ft think. I don’t believe the Chinese ship was that capable

Polar Star is a little heavier than the Snow Dragon but not tremendously heavier.

[RitchieAprile]

i’m pretty sure thats the Artika class ‘Sovetskiy Soyuz’.
Can break ice up to 2.8m.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

Gentlemen!

Thanks, that was excellent information, I had no idea.

And those of who were icebreaker vets, thank you for your valiant service and hardship.

[Nachoman]

Why don’t they give the Sea Shepards a bunch of picks and axes and send them down there?

[Delta 21]

Back and Ram Bump.

Callin’ in the pros.

[vette6387]

“So the Navy doesn’t conduct polar icebreaking operations, that responsibility falls solely to the U.S. Coast Guard, the most professional of the three seagoing services.”

Good info. I have a HS classmate who is a USCG Academy grad. He had to miss our 55th HS reunion this year because it was his 50th at the Academy.
BTW, will the Polar Star have the capability to free these other two vessels? From what I have read about it, it can break up to 21ft of ice.

[Delta 21]

Called it last week.

[Ramius]

Yah. The Polar class are maybe the only ones that can do it at this point, apart from the soviet nuclear breakers. The soviet nukes are bigger, heavier and can break thicker ice (when they are operating) but the polar class were at one point (not sure about the Healy) the most powerful non-nuclear ice breakers in the world.

[stormer]

I used to drive by Pier 36 everyday where they moored, but haven’t for several years. I thought the Polar Sea was over in Todd Shipyard to be cut up and then government changed its mind and was thinking a overhaul like the Polar Star. The Healy is actually slightly longer and heavier than the Polar class, but I’m not sure about icebreaking capacity.

[naturalman1975]

It is a bit of a joke, yes - this situation has been created by the arrogance of certain scientists in not properly anticipating the dangers of their mission. But for perspective - what has happened here, is we have a situation where there is a vessel in distress that has asked for help. It is the responsibility of all seaman in a position to provide assistance to do so - that's a fundamental law of the sea. The location of the problem puts it in the area that Australia takes responsibility for coordinating sea rescue in, so AMSA has the lead in that regard. It will look for all vessels either in the area, going to the area, or nearby, that could be useful in rendering assistance and will ask them for help. The US is about to send one of its icebreakers into the area, so a request for US assistance is basically straightforward. We've previous asked for assistance (and received it) from Chinese and French icebreakers in the area, and we've despatched our own.

Post mortems on these rescues occur after lives have been saved, and ships have been saved - and at that point, you may well say "You were an idiot to get yourself into this situation". But any sailor knows that if you get the call for help, and you can help, you have to do what you can - because that helps make sure that when you need to ask, somebody might come to help you.

[vette6387]

“This icebreaker is going to have to travel at least 10,000 miles to help out on what these warmist numbskulls started. A huge carbon footprint!!!”

Polar Star was most recently in Sydney, Australia according to another article. They will take six or seven days to get to the area of the problem. It isn’t a 10,000 mile trip!