ANTARCTICA yacht

[shipstamps]

She was built by Société Françise de Construction Navale, France for Dr. Jean Louis Etienne.
Launched as ANTARCTICA (some web sites give L ANTARCTIQUE).
Tonnage 19? tons, dim. 30 x 10m.
Sail area 400m². two-mast schooner rigged.
Powered by two MWM diesels, 350hp. bunker capacity 50 tons.
Range under power 10.000 miles.
Her hull was built of an aluminum-alloy and mostly 2.54cm thick. Her framing is of a heavy construction. The bow is a cast block of aluminum, which was specifically poured in a foundry in France, and she can break ice to 80cm.
The propellers are in a tunnel and can be protected by ice breaking bars when passing through ice.
Did have accommodation for 20 people, with 3 toilets and showers, after her refit.
Completed in 1988

She was built special for Arctic and Antarctic exploration voyages, and there is a lot of scientific equipment onboard.
11 December 1993 she sailed from Hobart in Tasmania for the Mission Erebus expedition, and after a passage of three weeks she reached the ice pack, the icebreaker POLAR SEA assisted her for the last 60 miles.
The expedition took 10 days to reach the summit of Mount Erebus.
28 February 1994 she returned at Christchurch, New Zealand.
1998 Etienne decided to refit her in a polar cruise yacht to make cruises with wealthy passengers to the waters of the Polar Regions.
1999 She made one polar cruise, before she was bought by the Cousteau Society and renamed ANTARCTIC EXPLORER.
2000 Already bought by Peter Blake for the Blake Expeditions around the world.
August after her refit for her new owner and renamed SEAMASTER, she sailed in Nov. 2000 from Auckland bound for South America via the Campbell and Antipodes Islands; she arrived in December in Terra del Fuego.
From January till March 2001 at the Antarctic Peninsula, then she returned to Puerto Williams in Tierra del Fuego, from there she sailed to the River Amazon and arrived in June/Aug in Receife.
After fitting the yacht out for the expedition on the Amazon River, she left in September.
05 December 2001 Peter Blake the famous skipper of the yacht was murdered and two crewmembers wounded on board of the SEAMASTER by a gang of pirates, when the yacht was at anchor at Macapa in the month of the Amazon River, waiting for custom clearance, after a two month expedition on the Amazon River, before she could proceed to the Orinoco River, Venezuela.
After the Amazon expedition ended the SEAMASTER sailed to Bermuda for a refit.
Then from June to August 2002 an expedition to Greenland, Baffin Island and Lancaster Sound.
The next year she was fitted out for an expedition to Greenland and the North West Passage.
2004 Made a Coral Reef Expedition to the South Pacific and South East Asia from February to September 2004, before she headed to New Zealand for a refit.
December 2004 sailed for an Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition, visiting main points of interest on the edge of the Antarctic Continent and selected Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Islands.
June 2005 she will return in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Herald gives on 03 January 2009, that the yacht is sold to a French sailing enthusiast Etienne Bourgois, and which has been sitting idle at Rhode Island the last 18 months.
She will keep the name SEAMASTER, and he will use the yacht for the same purposes as the late Sir Peter Blake.
Mr Bourgois bought the yacht as believed for US$ 1.75.

SG340

Source: Ships on Stamps CD-Rom. http://www.blakexpeditions.com and other web-sites.
New Zealand Herald on line.

[aukepalmhof]

2003 Renamed in TARA, which means "Celestical path" in Maori.
Russia 2007 postcard
New Zealand 2009 $2.80 sg?, scott?