Polar Star discovers a new rock, driving by braile :(

You may have heard as it is making its rounds in the news, that the Polar Star bumped a rock a few days ago. By my reading it is on the scale of a fender-bender as far as vessels go, but the body shop is inconveniently on the other side of the Drake.

The story in very brief terms: she was just off Detaille Island, about 30 miles south of the Antarctic Circle, when she hit a rock while traveling at approximately 1 knot. The outer hull was breached but the inner hull remained intact, and after an assessment she traveled up to King George Island where divers from one of the research stations did more detailed inspections. They decided to offload all passengers onto three other tour vessels before heading across to Ushuaia. She's in the Drake now, and they have cancelled their next voyage which had been scheduled to depart February 6. My speculation is that industrial divers will seal the outer hull with a solid but temporary patch so that she can complete the season, then in drydock between the Antarctic and Arctic seasons the plating will be replaced in a permanent manner. I'm not one for the sensational story, so you'll see here no words like 'rescued', 'stranded' or other such things because nobody was ever in danger, and as it turns out incidents like this happen about as often as accidents happen anywhere. What is important is that safety is managed, and that there is a self-sufficiency created by the network of IAATO that allows us to operate safely in extremely remote waters. Long live the Antarctic!

If you'd like the full details in more accurate form than any newspapers are reporting, read the IAATO press releases: http://www.iaato.org/press.html

This does in no way compromise our next voyage onboard Polar Star, December 2011 to January 2012, but it does for me highlight the expedition nature of any travel into a place so remote as Antarctica, and make me glad that we are not scheduled to get onboard next week.

Google map link to the location of the newly discovered rock: http://bit.ly/hSELsD