Posts Tagged ‘icebreaker rescue’

Sea of Okhotsk: The saga continues…..

January 23, 2011

From Itar-Tass today:

from Itar-Tass

VLADIVOSTOK, January 23 (Itar-Tass) – An unusually strong ice nipping in the Sakhalin Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk impedes the efforts of the Admiral Makarov and the Krassin icebreakers to lead to clear waters The Bereg Nadezhdy transport refrigerator and the Sodruzhestvo floating factory.

The fishery ships got stuck in the ice December 31, 2010, and the caravan did not manage to move a single mile forwards since Saturday morning. It is still mired at a distance about 30 miles away from the areas of open floating ice, the Far-Eastern Shipping Line said.

The rescue operation is multi-stage and complicated, as the Admiral Makarov and the Krassin will first have to free the refrigerator from the ice trap, after which they will have to return for the floating factory, deadlocked in the ice together with the 348 crewmembers aboard.

Awaiting the caravan at the edge of the ice shield are the icebreaker Magadan and the tanker Viktoria. The latter will have to refuel the two icebreakers before they start the voyage back into the ice-packed spaces of the sea.

 

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Ships and crew safe but Sea of Okhotsk rescue suspended for bad weather

January 20, 2011

The Okhotsk saga continues: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15874433&PageNum=0

MOSCOW, January 20 (Itar-Tass) – The operation to rescue the Shore of Hope refrigerator ship and the Sodruzhestvo mother ship, ice-nipped in the Sea of Okhotsk, has been suspended as weather conditions have deteriorated, sources from the press service of the Russian Transport Ministry report.

According to the source, the operation to get the ships out of a heavy ice zone by the Admiral Makarov and the Krasin icebreakers began at 21:30 Moscow time on Wednesday.

“However, the deterioration of weather conditions (a cyclone is hovering over Sakhalin, and there is no transport connection) has suspended the active phase of the operation to get the ships out of ice,” the source said, adding that an abnormally bad weather is characterized by zero visibility, the strengthening of winds and ice compression.

Now the ships are relatively safe, and nothing threatens the crews, the sources said. As soon as weather conditions improve, the active phase will be resumed.

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