07/01/2011
... and
two to go in the continuing
Okhotska Sea crisis - the biggies. On this day, the Russian Orthodox Christmas Day, the
Makarov (above) has rescued the
Professor Kizevetter and passed her through to the
Magadan which is escorting her to a safe area. Now for the
Sodruzhestvo and the 13,000-ton fish carrier,
Bereg Nadezhdy, probably in reverse order.
Meanwhile, the Krasin is still on its way,
now expected late on 8 January (tomorrow) â earlier than first reported. She really must be piling on the coal. She must then penetrate the ice shelf â from the reports, the best I can gather is that the trapped ships are about 20 miles in, although that will vary as the shelf itself â particularly in this region â is highly mobile.
We also got confirmation from
a very badly translated piece of the fate of the trawler
Nimbus. It is indeed stuck in the Barents Sea (or was), with the rescue tug
Murmanryba coming to its aid.
The Barents Sea is, of course, another "poster child" for the warmists, who fret constantly about the ebb and flow of the ice there. Clearly, it is more flow than ebb at the moment, if experienced trawler captains are getting stuck (and they have to be experienced to be allowed up there, some of the most dangerous waters in the world).
UPDATE: What has been described as a Russian fishing trawler, with at least 11 crew on board,
is reported sunk in stormy waters west of the island of Sakhalin, according to the
Interfax agency. Two Russian transport boats and an An-74 aircraft were searching for missing crew members, amid "unusually fierce storms that have seen gusts of up to 65 mph". Hopes of finding any survivors are remote due to the stormy conditions and low temperatures.
Another report
suggests that this is a Cambodian-flagged ship, the
Partnyor, with about a dozen Russians on board. "The ship is sinking," the
Partnyor said in an SOS message read on television by a federal fisheries agency spokesman, Alexander Savelyev. "The only life raft opens with difficulty, the wrong way." The ship was about 6 nautical miles from Sakhalin Island's southwest coast when it sent the distress signal.
Back in the Okhotsk Sea, the
Admiral Makarov is said to be less than 15 miles from the 13,000-ton fish carrier
Bereg Nadezhdy, with rescue operations being hampered by poor weather conditions. The trapped ships are estimated to be some 24 miles into the ice pack, which suggests that there has not been any great progress.
The deputy head of Federal Fisheries Agency, Alexander Saveliyev, is nevertheless saying that all the ships will be freed by the end of the New Year holidays, which run through Monday. "It will only be possible to pull the
Bereg Nadezhdy out by dinner time on Saturday," he says, "and the
Sodruzhestvo fishery mother ship by the end of the (Russian) New Year holidays."
The Transportation Ministry says that the
Sodruzhestvo (pictured above) would be the most difficult to free
because it was wider than the icebreaker. This indeed, has been the problem all along, as to how an icebreaker can extract such a large ship.
The incidents, are of course, triggering episodes of award-winning journalism, this example from
The Times via
Sify. And Mr Murdoch wants us to pay for this?
COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD