3 icebreakers race to ship with 74 passengers trapped in antarctic SYDNEY, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Three icebreakers raced Thursday to a Russian ship carrying 74 tourists, scientists and crew members trapped in thick ice in an antarctic blizzard. The MV Akademik Shokalskiy, a 233-foot ice-strengthened cruise ship built in 1982, became trapped in the blizzard's high winds 2 miles from open ocean, just off Antarctica, Christmas morning, officials said. It remains stuck in thick ice floes at a small, steep rocky island near Cape de la Motte, about 100 nautical miles east of the French antarctic scientific Dumont d'Urville Station, where the 2005 documentary "March of the Penguins" was filmed, and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart, Australia, the Tasmanian capital. The ship was tracing the steps of Australian geologist Douglas Mawson on the 102nd anniversary of his December 1911 antarctic expedition during the southernmost continent's so-called heroic age of exploration. Mawson experienced a blizzard too. The Shokalskiy has been at sea since Dec. 8, when it left Bluff, New Zealand's southernmost town, the same town Mawson left Dec. 2, 1911. The scientists and tourists have been repeating and extending many of Mawson's wildlife and weather observations in the hope of building a picture of how parts of the Antarctic Circle have changed in the past century. The ship is trapped in "a very remote location, so it is not your everyday search-and-rescue mission," Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Andrea Hayward-Maher told NBC News. Hayward-Maher, whose agency is coordinating the rescue, said she believed the 52 explorers and tourists and 22 crew members were not in immediate danger. China's Xue Long, France's Astrolabe and Australia's Aurora Australis are racing toward the Shokalskiy at full throttle, she said. The Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, is expected to reach the trapped ship late Friday, followed by the Astrolabe. The raging blizzard "could hinder the options that we have," Hayward-Maher told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Britain's Guardian newspaper, which has two reporters on the Shokalskiy, said officials hoped the ship would be able to break free of the ice this weekend. On its way back to Bluff, the crew plans to stop the ship at Macquarie Island, halfway between Antarctica and New Zealand, so the scientists can do some brief wildlife, oceanography and climate research, the Guardian said.