Epic Antarctica
Semi-Circumnavigation
Via the Phantom Coast and the Ross Sea
32 days
3 December 2010 to 3 January 2011During this voyage we plan to visit the Phantom Coast, the only passenger expedition to do so in 2008. Explorer Richard E. Byrd gave the coast that lies between Palmer Peninsula and Thurston Island its ghostly title. For two centuries, the ice-locked coastline defied the efforts of explorers to chart it. In the early 1960s, the US Navy mounted icebreaker operations in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas. USS Glacier and USS Staten Island, equipped with helicopters penetrated farther than any previous surface vessels. More than forty years later, exploring the Phantom Coast is still a challenge for all but the toughest vessels. Our purpose-built, polar class, icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov can meet the challenge.
