The icebreaker may have had to help break the way in spots. As we noted when the Barents Observer first announced the attempt:
LNG Tanker Embarks on First Ever Mid-winter Voyage on Northern Sea Route
These Arc-7 tankers can break ice up to two metres thick and the Novatek powers-that-be may have left it a week too late for the ship to make it on its own. From the Danish Meteorological Institute:
The turquoise colored ice is about as much as the tanker is good for, I mean 6 1/2 feet is a lot of ice but the areas colored green are beyond the capabilities of the Novatek fleet so it's going to be a close-run thing.
If the Christophe de Margerie gets stuck, Rosatom, the icebreaker fleet operator, charges big roubles to come save your butt. And that's what looks to be setting up in the straits between the East Siberian Islands on the approaches to the Laptev Sea. Good luck folks....
*****
....On the other hand, the icebreaker Rosatom has positioned in the East Siberian Sea is the one ship in the entire world that you want standing by, the 25,168 tonnes displacement 50 Let Pobedy. [Fifty Years of Victory]:....
And back to the Barents Observer for the finale:
It is the first time that a commercial vessel sails across the Northern Sea Route in February. The voyage of the Christophe de Margerie from Jiangsu in China to the remote Arctic terminal of Sabetta was made in the Arctic winter dark and through thick sea-ice.
Glimpses of the voyage are now put on display by shipping company Sovcomflot and its partner Rosatom.
As previously reported by the Barents Observer, the 299 meter long LNG carrier operated by Sovcomflot on the 27th January set out from the Chinese port and few days later sailed through the Bering Strait were it soon team up with nuclear icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy....
....MUCH MORE, including video
One of the reasons 50 Let Pobedy was THE ship you wanted with you is that the new class of Russian icebreakers, though heavier and having more power, may need 50 Let Pobedy to come get THEM:
It is mid-winter, but world's most powerful icebreaker lies idle in port
