Summary :- Travelling from North Pole to Franz Josef Islands (mid-day at 83° 43.5' N 50° 37.5' E), Engine Room tour
Detail :-
Today it was our turn to do a tour of the engine room. After a presentation by the Chief Engineer (see details below) our group of ten were taken deep into the bowels of the boat. Surprisingly, perhaps, there were no restrictions on photographs with the only exception, unfortunately, being the most photogenic room : the control room. We were more careful walking round than we might otherwise have been because on the first tour one of our fellow passengers had slipped, breaking his foot. We are beyond the range of hospital access of course so whatever goes wrong with you has to be treated on the spot so it's rather more important than usual not to have an accident.
We had a couple of lectures during the afternoon. One was on the history of Franz Josef Land. Despite the name, the islands are Russian, the "Franz Josef" originating from the fact that he was the Austrian Emperor at the time when Austrian explorers discovered the place.
Although uninhabited, the islands have been used in their time for various scientific purposes, especially meteorological. The big historical interest is in a place called Cape Flora. After his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole back in the 1890s, Nansen and his companion struggled back south, ending up in Franz Josef Land. Their status was not wonderful, having gone months without supplies and not being too sure where they were. They were about to set off in an arguably doomed attempt to reach civilisation when what seemed like a further disaster struck : a walrus punctured their makeshift boats skin so they had to postpone their departure in order to make some repairs.
Unbelievably, given that they were hundreds of miles from any settlement, during these repairs Nansen said he could hear a dog barking. His companion must have thought the long Northern nights must have turned Nansen mad but when they went to investigate they found a British explorer called Jackson. Ironically, Jackson had applied to join Nansen's expedition but been turned down, Nansen advising him to do a reconnaissance of Franz Josef Land instead. Good (for Nansen) advice indeed !
The second lecture was on the botany of the islands. This was a fascinating talk describing not only the flowers we might expect to see, along with the various mosses ad lichens, but also the various evolutionary adaptations made by the fauna to cope with the extremely hostile environment. We also learnt that the American name for Rose Bay Willow Herb is Fireweed, because it is one of the first colonizers of land after it has been devastated by a fire.
Trip Snippet :-
"50 Years of Victory" is the largest icebreaker in the world. It is 155m long and weighs 25,000 tons. It can exceed 20 knots in open water and can carve its way though 3m thick ice, although its speed drops to 3 knots then. Its nuclear reactor power does not drive the propulsion system directly, but instead generates electricity for an electric motor which is far better able to cope with rapid changes of propellor speed (so it is a nuclear-electric engine, analogous to the diesel electric engines on railways). It produces 55 MW of electricity for the propulsion system (enough t support a small town 0f 10,000 people) and 5 MW for the other electrical needs of the boat. They produce their own fresh water by desalination.
There are 86 Geiger counters around the boat to check on radiation levels although in fact the amount of radiation passengers are exposed to is less than what is received on a sunny day in a city with reflections off buildings.
The hull is spoon-shaped to help the boat to ride up and crash down on the ice. There is a stainless steel strip along the edge (visible on one of our North Pole photos) to facilitate slipping through the ice. If the boat should get stuck in ice, water can be pumped inside the boat from aft to stern and vice versa, or from side to side, in order to rock the boat and thus to free it.