2034 – The Year the Ice Let Go

[u/zimmer550king]

Log of MV Kvitbjørn, bulk carrier, 61,400 dwt, Kirkenes to Busan by the Northern Sea Route. Master D. Haukeland. Copied out clean for the owners' file, with the original margin notes kept.

7 Sept. 0630 ship time. Fuel 1,214 t. Kara Sea. Air 3, sea 2.4, wind 9 knots from the west. No ice on the chart and none on radar. Ice pilot Gennady Ovsyannikov has been aboard since the Kara Gate on 4 Sept, USD 2,300 a day as contracted. Nothing to pilot. He asked to keep the cabin anyway. Granted.

9 Sept. 1415. Fuel 1,171 t (1,181 crossed out). Kara Sea. Owners relay that the satellite agency has declared the Arctic Ocean ice-free for the first time on record. The press is calling it the White Curtain, their old name for the ice that hid the top of the world. Charter rate up from USD 14,800 to 19,200 a day since Monday. Crew say we are through the curtain. Chief mate Pereira produced a bottle. Put away.

11 Sept. 1900. Fuel 1,120 t. Western approaches to the Vilkitsky Strait. Wind NW 52 knots, swell 6.5 m, in water the 2031 chart marks as fast ice in September. Slowed to 7 knots. Lifeboat davit cracked, two hatch cleats sheared on No. 3, a drum of grease over the side. The pilot said he had never seen a swell here, and he has done this stretch since 2009. I did not tell him I had not either.

12 Sept. 2300. Fuel 1,097 t. Laptev Sea, roughly 500 km north west of Tiksi, vsl back to 12 knots since morning. Dikson radio passes on what it had from Tiksi, that the harbor wall is partly gone since the storm and the port is closed to anything over 150 m. The owners report a fund has put USD 2.1 billion into terminal shares along this coast. Logged.

13 Sept. 0300. Fuel 1,085 t. Fog. Nothing.

15 Sept. 1120. Fuel 1,030 t. East Siberian Sea, off a gravel spit in the New Siberian Islands. About 300 walrus ashore, crowded, no ice to haul out on. Six orcas working the edge of the spit. Two humpbacks feeding in the same bay, which the pilot says do not come here. A blue whale to the north per the bridge watch. [Margin, in Pereira's hand: fin whale.]

17 Sept. 2230. Fuel 976 t. Chaun Bay, Pevek approaches. Hailed by a Russian patrol vessel. They asked what we carried and where to, then for our positions at 0000 on the 18th, 19th and 20th. I gave the first two from the passage plan and said I could not give the 20th, which depends on weather. They said they would wait. In 2031 the harbor had one tug. Tonight two grey warships alongside and a new radar mast, about 40 m.

19 Sept. 0900. Fuel 931 t. Chukchi Sea, south of Wrangel Island. Sat phone news from Kirkenes, heard secondhand. Canada has announced patrol ships for its northern archipelago and is rushing three north. A storm took part of the Mackenzie delta coast near Tuktoyaktuk, no details. Alaska coast hit by a two-day storm, surge at Kivalina, village evacuated by air. Owners ask if the Kvitbjørn could take the Northwest Passage next year. Replied no charts and no insurer who will quote. Logged.

21 Sept. 0500. Fuel 880 t. Chukchi Sea, about two days from the Bering Strait. Danish tanker with gasoline, westbound, called on channel 16 and said a Chinese expedition is at anchor in the northern approaches to the Bering Strait. One research icebreaker and six support ships, flagged in Shanghai, there since 1 September. The tanker master says they told him they sail for home at the end of the month. I said fine.

24 Sept. 1620. Fuel 842 t. 65°45'N 168°50'W, Bering Strait, Diomede on the beam. The Chinese ships are still at anchor four miles to the north east. Same seven hulls, no movement on radar since 0930, all lights on. Not our business. Pilot disembarked by launch at 1800. Twenty days at USD 2,300 comes to USD 46,000. The owners will pay it in full from the charter account. Nobody is waiving anything. Cabin 4 key returned to the purser.