February 2012

Ice Patrol Update - The new Ice Patrol Ship PROTECTOR has proved a success on the first deployment down south.    Sailing through the Lemaire Channel, (along the Antarctic Peninsula), on a four hour transit the ship broke ice for the first time in British naval service, witnessed by admiring seals and penguins from the passing ice floes..    At Deception Island, a stunning water-filled volcanic caldera that is one of just two in the world, the PROTECTOR sent the small Survey Boat JAMES CAIRD IV (with multibeam echo sounder equipment) to survey the area known as 'Neptune's Bellows'.   (It was here that in 2007 the cruise ship NORDKAPP ran aground and was assisted by the old Ice Patrol Ship ENDURANCE).  

PROTECTOR then moved on to Port Lockroy, a historic British base manned by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, bring much needed resupply of stock, loaded in Portsmouth for the base and  Post Office.  The PROTECTOR’s Work Boat TERRA NOVA delivered the supplies and then transferred building waste back to the PROTECTOR to comply with the Antarctic Treaty and environmental protocols.    The museum (at Port Lockroy) featuring preserved living conditions from the 1940s and 1950s complete with handwritten notes and other memorabilia. Cold weather experts from the PROTECTOR were deployed in the form of the Royal Marines, to complete their cold weather training.    A team of four spent two nights at an abandoned Admiralty base, facing gale force winds with 55 knot (100km/h) gusts to both collect information, used for chart making and satellite positioning, and to record the tidal range, with precise GPS measurements taken on land to make sure the tide gauge was level. Some of the crew of PROTECTOR visited the Spanish Antarctic station Gabriel de Castilla,     The patrol continues.