Posted on 12/31/2013 2:09:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Passengers and crew aboard a Russian ship trapped for eight days in ice off Antarctica planned to ring in the New Year with dinner, drinks and song as they waited for a break in a blizzard to allow a Chinese helicopter to rescue them.
But they can't party too hard because the rescue could come at any minute.
The Akademik Shokalskiy, trapped since December 24 about 100 nautical miles east of a French Antarctic station, Dumont D'Urville, and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Tasmania, welcomes the New Year at 1100 GMT, two hours ahead of Sydney.
It was not possible to contact the ship immediately thanks to patchy communications in one of the coldest and remotest places on Earth, but the plan was for passengers to congregate in the bar and sing a song about their adventure.
Revelries were to be kept in check in case passengers and crew had to leave at any moment if the snow and wind cleared.
"Tonight's celebrations have been tempered by the knowledge that we will definitely be getting helicoptered off, basically at the earliest opportunity, once the weather improves," Andrew Peacock, the expedition's doctor, said by satellite telephone.
"The camaraderie has been great but it is all a bit of a shame for it to end this way. We know a lot of other people are working incredibly hard to get us out of here."
The ship left New Zealand on November 28 on a private expedition marking the 100th anniversary of an Antarctic journey led by famed Australian explorer Douglas Mawson.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
An elderly lady fell and broke her hip. They had to get her off the ship by helicopter. It took hours to maneuver in the choppy seas so the helicopter could safely land and take off. That was just one person being evacuated and the ship not having to deal with ice. It was on the Queen Mary 2, about the sturdiest ships there is. These folks are on a much smaller ship.
Maybe everybody on board should stop laughing and joking and realize there's real danger here, both to the passengers and to those who will have to make the rescue. Maybe we should be asking why those rescuers have to risk their lives because of "extreme" vacationing run amok.
Truthfully, by now they should be desperate to evacuate, because unless they take the first opportunity to do so, it may soon be too late. Temperatures in January are usually the second warmest, but winter may come weeks early.
Even leaving a skeleton crew behind is a big risk.
But not a bad way for a liberal to end it?
How many decades will it take until it is free again?
Stories of extraordinary human endurance like this one just warm the heart.
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