A few years old now, but with John's permission here we go...
This is the Akademik Fedorov, an expedition icebreaker operated by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg. Between jobs, the offer of this journey was hard to refuse. We left Cape Town in April, at the very end of the season, but more about that later...
Here Fedorov is "moored" to Antarctica - the first stop at Novolazarevskaya station.
Resupply Russian style - no need to refrigerate the piggies of course. The two Mi-8's were operated by SPARC in St Petersburg, one being flown to the ship as it passed Sierra Leone, which explained the AK-47 roundel with a red line through it on the door...
Still day with thin sea ice forming...
Drilling ice cores for research...
Pancake ice - when the sea freezes with a swell, patches form and bump together causing the characteristic pie crust edges. Occasionally you could see penguins on them, but never when you had a camera
Warm welcome on board...
Departing, the ship wedged in the ice at Progress station...
Nightime navigation, paying attention to what might be lurking in the pool of light at the end of the searchlight beam...
The reason the Russians resupply so late - dropping off tractors for the Vostok supply convoy on the newly formed sea ice. The cargo operation demands a certain thickness to support these T-34 tank derivatives, as it turned out it wasn't quite enough, so a gruelling operation was mounted to get the ship to an iceberg in the bay at Mirny station and leave them there. When the ice was thick enough to drive on they could be moved to the station. Sounds like a job Clarkson might like...
What it's all about, a real privilege to be in Antarctica...
More words and pictures, with some from the north:
http://www.nericha.com/PDF/The%20Sea...KING%20ICE.pdf
Thanks for looking.
nrh