Rescue Operations in Remote Regions
This expedition to Antarctica took us through the Ross and Amundsen Seas, which are some of the most remote places on the planet. While there might be 50 or more ships traveling around the Antarctic Peninsula at any point in the summer, there are rarely more than 5 ships traveling on the Ross Sea side of the continent, and most of them traveled there and back by way of New Zealand or Australia. By traveling from the Ross Sea toward the Antarctica Peninsula and South America, we were very much the exception.
At one point in our journey, while we were in the Amundsen Sea, we were 1250 nautical miles from the nearest coastal research stations: McMurdo Station on Ross Island and Rothera Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. In fact, the closest inhabited research station was the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which was only 1200 nautical miles away at the very bottom of the planet. And there were only two other ships in the entire Amundsen Sea: the Marigolds, a Ukrainian fishing vessel, and the Nathaniel B Palmer, a American research vessel exploring the area near the Thwaites Glacier. It was particularly weird to be so far away from civilization because the Coronavirus pandemic was just getting into full force, so the whole world was changing but we were completely unaffected by it. In that sense, we were the safest people in the world.
However, on the evening of March 11th, the captain made an announcement that all passengers were required to join a mandatory meeting in the bar in five minutes. This sort of announcement is almost never good. In fact, that last time I had heard this announcement, I was at the opposite end of the earth in Svalbard, an archipelago near the North Pole. I was on a week-long expedition cruise around Svalbard, looking for polar bears, and the captain made the same announcement.
When I was in Svalbard, the captain announced that there were engine problems. We were told they would take four hours to fix, but four hours turned into eight hours, which turned into twelve hours, which turned into a call for a rescue from the ship Polarsyssel. To make a long story short, it took Polarsyssel about 22 hours to get to us and then another 33 hours to tow us back the 264 nautical miles to port Longyearbyen.
I was quite nervous that we were getting a similar announcement in Antarctica, much further away from civilization. We all met in the bar, where the captain told us that the ship was experiencing engine problems. He claimed that they would be fixed in one hour. I thought, "I've heard this before," and people immediately began discussing what would happen if we were actually stranded, how long it would take for a rescue ship to get to us, and how long it would take us to get back to land. In the end, the engine was fixed within the hour and we sailed on, but in the problems below, you'll do the calculations to determine just how long a rescue would have taken.
Sample Problems
1. If the Polarsyssel was able to travel 264 nautical miles in 22 hours to get to our position, what was its average speed?
2. If the Polarsyssel was able to make the return journey in 33 hours while also towing Ortelius, what was its average speed while towing?
3. Use Google Maps to measure the distance between 68°43.374'S, 102°28.361'W (where we had engine trouble in the Amundsen Sea) and Ushuaia, Argentina (the nearest port with rescue vessels). Convert this to nautical miles.
4. Assuming we were stuck in the Amundesen Sea, calculate how long it would take for a ship to travel to our rescue from Ushuaia if it could travel at the same speed as the Polarsyssel.
5. Calculate how long it would take for the rescue ship to then tow us back to Ushuaia after reaching us in the Amundsen Sea.