Two southern rescue helicopters are making one of their furthermost journeys into subantarctic waters today to evacuate an injured crew member from a German cruise ship.
Graeme Gale, accompanied by paramedic Doug Flett, in the Otago Regional Rescue Helicopter, and Richard "Hannibal" Hayes, from Te Anau, in his long-range helicopter, are expected to rendezvous with the MS Bremen in the Southern Ocean 1500km south of Invercargill about 1pm today.
The Dunedin-based rescue helicopter was scheduled to leave at 4am.
Both machines would first fly to Auckland Island, 470km southwest of Invercargill, to refuel and then fly a further 250km to Campbell Island.
After refuelling again, the helicopters would fly to the ship, which last night was heading towards New Zealand, and by this afternoon should be about 300km south of Campbell Island, Mr Gale said.
Two helicopters were required to perform the at-sea winch and retrievals.
The rescue was one of the more distant by the helicopters, which had flown together on similar rescues, Mr Gale said.
The pilots were refuelling twice because it was better to have full tanks.
The plan was to transport the injured man, who had hand injuries, to Southland Hospital.
Conditions in the Southern Ocean were expected to be rough, with strong winds and big swells forecast.
The MS Bremen left Bluff last Thursday with 110 mainly German passengers on board for a 36-day tour of the subantarctic islands, the Antarctic and the South Shetland Islands.
