Ooooh… I like that one…
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Pouring My Art Out by Arthur H. Browne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at https://pouringmyartout.wordpress.com/.
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Pouring My Art Out 
Has to be entitled “Yamal”
Funny story – and very true, there is a discovery channel documentary on it. ha! Canada claims much of the Arctic as sovereign territory. Many countries, including the US and Russia dispute that, wishing to use the Northwest Passage and the Arctic for commercial and military purposes. The problem is that the ice breakers we have, the only ships currently able to pass, are not nearly powerful enough to patrol up there. None the less we feel obligated to travel in the Arctic and do science there. Soooo, a few years ago discovery sent a camera crew aboard the Canadian ice breaker Louis St. Laurent to the North Pole for research purposes. there wa a very narrow window of time when the ice was thin enough for the breaker to make it and so they headed out. It was a huge task to get there involving many detours and slow progress, etc. Eventually, after many weeks, they arrived at the North Pole behind schedule. There is no military presence there and no satellite coverage and difficult communications. They were busy setting up experiments on the ice when a blip appeared on the radar. There was no help around and no way to verify what the blip was. It came directly at the ica breaker travelling at the astounding speed of 30 mph through the ice. For Hours they watched it grow closer and closer on radar, realizing that they had no weapons other than sidearms and no way to defend themselves and no way to get help. Then it came over the horizon, first as a dark spot identified as a ship, but with no smoke from the stacks. It roared up beside the St. Laurent, parked, and identified itself as the Russian military ice breaker the Yamal. They gave no reason why they were there just said “hello” and went about their business.
As the Canadians watched in amazement, the Russians proceeded to unload and assemble a sound stage complete with a full camera crew. When it was complete, they dropped a gangway and off trooped 50 small children who set up on the sound stage and began to produce a variety children’s TV show. It turns out that a TV station had rented the ice breaker to do a show at the North Pole. The Russians invited the canadians (and the cameras) over for dinner with the captain and a tour of the Nuclear Powered Ice Breaker. When they were done with their show the Canadians were leaving too so the Russians gave them an escort, breaking a path for the canadian breaker and saving the crew weeks in return time by cutting right through the heaviest ice.
Here’s the Yamal – and you can likely understand why it’s appearance produced anxiety:
yeah… but those Russians… they sure know how to break the ice… (sorry)
Bwahaha, have to when you’re a party crasher. ha!
I suppose so
In Russia’s weather, breaking the ice is one of the most common activities.
my point exactly
Now this is obviously why Russia is claiming the Arctic: they seem to be the only ones who don’t think much of casually staging a kids’ musical at the North Pole at the moment’s notice. 🙂
Yeah,they are the only ones who can get there all year around. sigh. And do you know what the worst of it is? A while back the Russian navy was bored so they sent a nuclear submarine under the ice to the Arctic, deployed an unmanned UV, planted a Russian flag on the bottom of the Arctic ocean took pictures of it and published the pictures along with the GPS data that proved it was sitting there. Sigh. We pretend we don’t notice and drastically increase our skidoo patrols from 1 a month to two a month. Sigh.
cheer up… all the ice will be gone soon… ha…
Ha! Our Coast guard and navy have been asking for Polar 8 class ice breakers to be able to patrol the Arctic for 30 years. They have planned them a few times but keep pulling the funding. It is now becoming a viable option to wait until the ice melts and use regular ships for patrol.
I really am sort of amazed to find out that ice is such a problem for you… I would think you would be experts…
Oh we are, in dealing with regular ice – we have a bunch of breakers that have set patrols to free stuck ships and provide escort and open ports and such, The ice at the North Pole is a cat of a different color. And the settlements that are up there are only accessible by supply boats during a month or so during the breakup. That;s when we move in supplies and such. Other than that they are connected often by ice roads in winter and by ice pilots. The problem is that those communities have no industry and engage in sustenance hunting fishing – they do not provide the type of revenue required to support a Polar 8. There are only a few such ice breakers in the world and Russia has many of them because they have northern Navy ports where they require them to escort military ships. They are ludicrously expensive to build, maintain and operate and require a huge support structure to service and rebuild. What most folks don’t realize is that ice has different crystal structures at different temperatures and pressures. The old ice close to the pole has properties that make it harder than steel and it is so thick that ice breakers don’t “break” it so to speak, but rather ride up on top if it and use the ship’s weight to crack and move the ice. Building a ship tough enough to operate literally out of water while on top of the ice, is a major deal costing a great amount and requiring much maintenance. The building/operating/maintenance of 1 Polar 8 would be over a billion dollars – a sum of money that could be used to support many regular ice breakers. So we have the technology, the skill and the facilities to do this but we do not have the fiscal need. What can I say?
well, if we are going to judge countries by their ability to spend crazy amounts of money on semi-militarily-oriented expenditures…
I say who ever can live there can live there.
Correction – I just checked and the going price just to build, not maintain or operate, a Polar 8 is $1.3 billion – with operating and service included cost is well over 3 billion. For that price a number of top of the line breakers could be built and operated. And the best way to power a Polar 8 is nuclear – a high cost system – because they require in excess of 100,000 horsepower to do the job of riding on ice.
riding on the ice would be easier…
Yeah, and in that name we do over land patrols but they can only operate when the ice is thick in the winter. three seasons they cannot because of holes in the ice.
damn ice holes!
That’s what the Iceman said…. bwahahahaha!
that bastard!
I see there is a discovery channel show on the Mighty Ships series called “Avataq” – which follows the supply ship that travels to the far north.
I will look for that
“Death awaits you with big, sharp, pointy teeth”
concise and to the point
That’s a difficult one…..I’ll have to think on this one a while…I love this game!
I am always trying to make people think… I think…
You do.
I try… you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think…