According to the news report passed to The Day by Anna Subbotina, press secretary of the yacht Scorpius the expedition that set out on the Antarctic round-the-world cruise around the South and North Poles (among the crew members there are two Ukrainians: Oleksandr and Liudmyla Stasiukevych) on September 18, 2011, set up the world record for ship sailing in Antarctics – for the distance it went on the Ross Sea. For the first time a sailing yacht reached 740 18’ south latitude and 1530 18’ west longitude. In a video captain Sergei Nizovtsev noted: “These were two months of going through ice storms, hurricane-force winds, ice, and fog. Finally, here we are, where even the captains of the icebreakers go with caution. Considering the technical and organizational complexity as well as the risk the Antarctic round-the-world cruise south of 60 and 70 degrees can be compared, as they say, to a space flight. For the first time in the history of sailing sport a yacht went so far to the south. This is our world record. It is less than a thousand miles to the South Pole – a stone’s throw away.”
At the present time, as Subbotina reported, through ice storms and winds the yacht Scorpius is heading towards the Ukrainian Polar station “Akademik Vernadsky,” and if ice conditions allow, it will make a stop there. To close the circle around the South Pole at the Russian Polar station “Bellingshausen,” the sailors will have to go another 2,000 miles. Because of frequent broken ice, which is not visible on radars, the yacht covers not more than 150-170 miles a day.
Perhaps, at the polar station “Akademik Vernadsky” the crew of Scorpius will meet the members of the 17th Ukrainian Antarctic expedition that went there from Kyiv in mid March.
