The Viking Polaris, the cruise ship damaged by a rogue wave near Antarctica last week, is the same ship Viking also uses on its Great Lakes cruises in Michigan.
Polaris and its sister ship, Octantis, just entered service this year. During the winter they sail in Antarctica. But during the summer they sail on the new Viking routes that stop at various ports in the Great Lakes, including Detroit, Alpena, Mackinac Island, the Soo, plus spots like Georgian Bay and Toronto, Ont., and Duluth, Minn.
Viking built these specific ships just for these Great Lakes markets, plus Antarctica. They hold 378 passengers and are just 665 feet long. Yet they are built very strongly as “Polar Class” vessels.
Given that, it is puzzling how a rogue wave could crash right through the thick glass of several stateroom windows as if they were flimsy plastic. Flying glass killed one woman, and four others were injured.
From accounts now coming in, Polaris had made it all the way across Drake Passage, one of the most dangerous waterways in the world, to Damoy Point in Antarctica. The day before the rogue wave hit, another accident occurred. Some kind of explosion on a penguin-watching Zodiac vessel threw passengers into the air, threw one man briefly overboard, and another woman broke her leg, according to eyewitnesses Kansas couple endure explosion, deadly rogue wave on Antarctic trip (usatoday.com).
Polaris at that point canceled the rest of the Antarctica trip and headed back toward Cape Horn, Chile. But then, the notoriously turbulent waters of the Drake Passage, with gale force winds and heavy waves, swirled into a giant rogue wave that bashed the side of the ship and blew out those windows. It killed a woman in her stateroom and injured others. The ship eventually limped into Cape Horn.
The first Polaris Great Lakes cruise scheduled for 2023 is April 28, Toronto to Milwaukee. Polaris is scheduled to sail 20 dates in the Great Lakes next year (see all the dates/itineraries here: https://www.vikingcruises.com/expeditions/ships/viking-polaris.html. )
But in the meantime, there will be questions about these vessels and the decisions made by Viking. Cruising the Drake Passage to Antarctica leaves very little room for error. It is not Lake Erie.