A leaky, fire-prone icebreaking ship slogs 11,500 miles from Seattle to Antarctica yearly to reach scientific bases. Meet the Coast Guard’s Polar Star.
It’s the austral summer, the season of science, when more than 1,000 researchers and support staff live at McMurdo Station — a jumble of dorms and dozens of other buildings located on the Ross Sea’s Winter Quarters Bay — and the much smaller Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station 1,000 miles inland.
That’s what it takes to reach McMurdo year after year, carving a path for a freighter loaded with everything the scientists need to survive. Rust stains the Polar Star's bridge, where Lt. Sam Krakower, the ship's assistant operations officer, writes vessel traffic updates on windshield glass. On Dec. 22, Stanclik made a much-anticipated “swim call,” halting the ship so sailors could plunge into the azure sea 260 miles west of New Caledonia.President Trump had hit an impasse with Congress over funding for his wall along the border with Mexico, shutting down much of the federal government.
Damage Controlman First Class James"Hiner" Hill, second from left, conducts a seminar in the Polar Star's workshop where crew members weld and fabricate parts. Slowly, she backed the Polar Star a half-ship’s length. Then firmly, she pushed the throttles from half-speed to full. Seawater sprayed through a broken fitting into a cramped compartment that houses the shaft turning the main propeller, which drives water past the rudder.
Crew members figured that if anyone could plug the hole, it would be chief engineer Brad Jopling, the son of a Montana heavy-equipment mechanic. Jopling, 40, never complained about being woken at odd hours by mechanics presenting handfuls of broken parts.Two Navy divers suited up. Laden with ropes, rubber mats and heavy plastic wrap, they were about to descend 30 feet to Polar Star’s idled propellers when a watch officer noticed a different threat: a pod of killer whales.
McMurdo sent four more bolts in a helicopter, which set down on the ice because the ship’s flight deck was no longer certified for landings. A crane lowered Jopling in a “man basket” to walk out and retrieve them.
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