MassXJ

Do you ever worry about the long term effects of your job on your heath, such as exposure to carcinogens on your bunker gear, or throwing out your back lifting a stretcher? When you overhaul a fire, do you wear your respirator or does the culture dictate you take your mask off as soon as the fire is out?

Current Antarctic laws prohibit us from spitting or having fun.

As pirates, we'd rather go back to being kids.

Sailing to and from the ice is fairly routine, with the exception of the constant rocking and rolling. Polar Class ice breakers are nicknamed "Polar Rollers", as a result of our unique hull shape, even the calmest of seas toss around like a sailboat in a bathtub. When actually breaking ice, the experience has been compared that of an earthquake. Given the nearly 70 miles of ice we had to break this year, ice breaking was a 24 hour operation. When everything is working properly, life is good on the boat. The boat is roughly 40 years old though, and many systems are constantly breaking down.

That's a tough question. Our ships is dubbed "The World's Most Powerful ^Non-Nuclear Icebreaker". The Antarctic Treaty excludes nuclear ships from going down there, so that pretty much just leaves us. In the event that we got stuck, we would "winter over". That means that most of crew would be flown back to Seattle, leaving behind a small care-taking crew, who could keep the boat alive until the next summer when hopefully the ice would melt enough for us to get out.