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airplanes and helicopters, drifting ice stations and information
from satellites. According to the fast changes of the ice situation
in the Arctic, the prognoses normally are prepared for about a week,
only, as a maximum. This time they had to calculate for about three
times as long a period. The forecast corresponded, however, not far
from exactly with the real situation, which proves the reliability
of the means nowadays available to the scientists.
ARKTIKA left Murmansk on August 9th, rounded the northern point of
Novaya Zemlya, Mys Zhelaniya, on the 10th, crossed the Kara sea on
the 11th, passed through landfast ice along the westcoast of Taymyr,
and rounded the northernmost point of the Eurasian Continent, Cape
Chelyuskin, on the 13th. Tn the Laptev Sea, between the meridians
of about East 117° and 122°, there were areas of freely navigable
water. She met the pack ice boundary at about N 77° 20', and close
pack ice not until about N 79°. The ice thickness then measured
approximately 1.5 m, and ARKTIKA could be navigated through the
ice at 14 knots.
A view of the ice concentration ahead of the ship, ridged ice zones,
level ice unaffected by deformation, cracks and leads, etc., was
continuously transmitted from the ship's helicopters and a plane of
type IL-14. The picture of the viewed area was received aboard
ARKTIKA on TV-screens, in that way offering the navigator a possi-
bility to choose the most suitable route and to stand for cracks
and level ice between the pressure ridges.
Aboard one of the helicopters, there was a quite new apparatus
installed for measuring the ice thickness. The name of this new
equipment is "Lëd", i.e., "Ice".
On the 15th of August the ship passed latitude 83° 06! N, the limit
of active navigation, reached by the Soviet ice-breaker YERMAK in this
area in 1938. The ARKTIKA had to force multi-year ice, up to 3m
or more thick, salt-fee, and therefore difficult to break. The
speed was reduced to 2-3 knots.
