The 154 people that were aboard the sinking cruise ship that struck ice on Friday in the Antarctic Ocean were prevented from disembarking in Sidney Bay in Antarctica by a heavy snow and wind storm.

During the rescue operation the 154 people (100 passengers and 54 crew members) of the Canadian-owned vessel were first put on lifeboats and then embarked on the Norwegian ship Nord Norge. Their ship, the 2,400-tons Explorer, ran into trouble near the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic Ocean, and began sinking.

“The passengers are absolutely fine. The Nord Norge has enough room to accommodate all the passengers, “so they may very well continue their journey on the Nord Norge. Traveling to Antarctica is always risky”, Susan Hayes, marketing vice-president for GAP Adventures in Toronto said.

The 154 were expected to come ashore in the Chilean Antarctic base Presidente Frei.

"They are on board the Nord Norge. What happened was that they arrived on Sidney Bay one hour ago, at around 1:30 pm (1630 GMT). The intention is to disembark these people and take them to Punta Arenas aboard a Hercules (airplane)," Lieutenant Italo Solari, the area's Chilean maritime authority, told the online edition of the Chilean daily El Mercurio. He added that the duration of the operation he described depends on the weather.

Solari said that when the weather will permit, the passengers of the sinking cruise ship will board Zodiac boats to be taken to the beach. On shore, half of them will spend the nigh at the Presidente Frei base, while the other half at the nearby Uruguayan base Artigas. Eventually they will be taken to Punta Arenas, on the Chilean mainland.

GAP Adventures disclosed the nationalities of those who embarked in what was probably the last journey of the Explorer: 24 Britons, 14 Americans, 12 Canadians, 10 Australians, 17 Dutch, 4 Irish, 4 Swiss, 2 Belgians, 3 Danes, 1 French, 1 German, 1 Swede, 2 Argentineans, 1 Columbian, 1 Japanese, 1 Chinese and two people from Hong Kong. They were all said to be safe, except for some cases of mild hypothermia.

Chilean government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said that the Chilean icebreaker Viel will sale towards the area of the impact within a few hours in order to find out what is the state of the Explorer.

"The information we currently have is that it is a ship that is sinking due to the perforation of its hull, and what the icebreaker Viel is going to do is see if there are any polluting agents or not," he said.

Weber dismissed the possibility of a natural catastrophe caused by a fuel leak due to the fact that the Explorer is carrying fuel and not crude oil, thus the potential pollution it could produce is “considerably less severe”.