Posted on 01/04/2014 2:33:13 PM PST by 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.
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!!!
Now to be fair it seems this ships mission this season was to head to Antarctica anyways to help resupply our (US) base/research station there
“The Polar Star, the U.S. Coast Guard’s only active heavy polar ice breaker, left its homeport in early December on one of its primary missions, Operation Deep Freeze. The ship’s mission is to break a channel through the sea ice of McMurdo Sound to resupply and refuel the U.S. Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station on Ross Island.”
I think most folks figured that one way or another American taxpayers would end up paying for this nonsense.
***
What I thought.
It’s a good thing we have those money trees.
U S Military has no personnel based in Antarctic. Coast Guard only U S presence. God bless them on this dangerous mission.
Some icebreakers have propellers in the bow that break up ice and propel forward. They are powered by electric motors that are strung to diesel generators in the rear. Same as many rear propellers are turned by electric motors (don’t quiz me on this)
And then who is going to rescue the Coast Guard ship?
I thought the Coast Guard had 2? One was pretty big.
Carries helicopters too.
Bow thrusters (and stern thrusters) are used for steering, but on an icebreaker can be used to basically shake the bow back and forth and widen a channel.
Polar Star has a sister, the Polar Sea. The CG’s biggest icebreaker, the Healy, is here in Seattle.
Nothing in article about the purpose of the mission being to study global warming? It was only to clear a channel?
Thanks. I thought it chopped up ice. Thanks for the logical explanation!
Folks,
I have nothing but the highest admiration and respect for the men and women of the USCG.
It just seemed a little odd that they would travel to Antarctica...I don’t think they could get much further away from home than that. I always assumed, from their name, that they were more or less bound domestically.
They have pretty good visibility up here in Maine, rescuing fishing vessels or the crew, breaking up ice jams on our rivers in the spring etc.
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?
Happily this isn’t far out its way. Barring yet more complications, it shouldn’t delay resupplying McMurdo, and thus most of our real antarctic science efforts too much. I’d rather they got out just before we get there. I don’t want our volcano bait first vacationer to get any credit.
I think they’ve been helping resupply McMurdo nearly as long as we’ve had the base there. Too risky to not use ice breakers and what other ones do we have.
lol
Better than that. “Hell Roaring Mike” Healy, the son of a Georgia plantation owner and a former slave. He was the captain of the most famous ship in Coast Guard history, the Bear.
This is the kind of crap you get when a bunch of libtards set out to prove something.
They all should have to pay the costs for all this stuff.
Short story is we have had Antarctica scientific research bases since I was little and this US ice breaker Polar Star was headed there anyway. So not much of a diversion to help out other nations ships that got stuck in ice helping out the warmists out for a fun New Years Eve party in the Antartcatic
(these idiots should be billed for their rescue)
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