Laura On Ice

Today we had a visit to the Swedish icebreaker Oden. The crew was kind enough to give us tours of the ship, which is a lovely vessel and very nicely appointed.

Here she is, with a view of the reinforced front, which breaks the ice. We learned a lot about icebreaking during our visit. Instead of pushing the ice like I thought it would, generally what they do is drive the bow of the ship on top of the ice, then use water jets to move the weight of the ship to one side, which causes the ice to break because of the weight. She is also very manouverable - she can go from full ahead to full astern in about 12 seconds. She’s not very fast, though. But she is really cool and seems like a nice place to live and work.

Here we are walking on the deck to go inside.

This is Tomas, the second mate, who showed us around the bridge. It’s amazing all the instrumentation they have on the ship - which turns out to be incredibly necessary since some of the places they go through are pretty much uncharted. He was saying that at one point in their journey here, they were in an area that was supposed to be 800 meters deep, and in reality it was only about 200 meters deep, because most of the depths they have are based on speculation.

They have very comfortable living areas as well: lounges with nice sofas, a little bar, a nice galley, and generally everyone gets their own room, which is something I envy. They also have two saunas! All in all, the Oden seems very nice, and I was fortunate to get to visit.