September 13th 2013

 

Iced Over!

One day before we arrived in Pevek, Sarema got an icy coating. During the night, everything outside had frozen stiff including the wind sensor at the top of the mast as a result of which the instruments showed the wind speed to be zero, and the wind angle had frozen to 45 degrees port.

Everything looked absolutely beautiful but when the sun came out and the ice began to thaw, the conditions on the deck became almost life-threatening; big chunks of ice started coming off the rigging crashing to the deck with a thunderous bang.

We knew that ice would be a hazard along the Northern Sea Route, but we could never have imagined that we should have brought crash helmets along to guarantee our safety!