Saturday 29th June 2013 +3hr BST Murmansk Russia: Gateway to the Northwest Passage

After two, one-hour forward time changes – the first yesterday afternoon at 2.30pm and the second this morning at 2.00am - to bring us in line with Eastern Russian time everyone was not surprisingly a little jaded at breakfast.  It’s hard to believe that we are now on much the same longitude as St Petersburg and Moscow and only just north of the Arctic Circle.

Murmansk is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, some 7.5 miles from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula and not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland. Although its population has declined from 468,039 in 1989 to 336,137 in 2002 and 307,257 in 2010 (Wikipedia figures) Murmansk remains the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. 

The port is ice-free all year round due to the warm North Atlantic Current and it is an important fishing and shipping destination.  It has a string of wharves and docks stretching for what seems miles but all of which were eerily silent today as we arrived but it was a Saturday morning.  There were hundreds of ships, floating docks and even a laid up naval aircraft carrier -  which a fellow guest told me had been there for at least 2 years - now the home of numerous gulls but still looking menacing under a rather dull overcast sky.

Murmansk is the home port to Atomflot, the world's only fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers.  There are currently 3 with a furthe one under construction because the port is set to be the Russian terminus of the Arctic Sea Bridge, a sea route linking it to the Canadian port of Churchill, Manitoba. The North West Passage has not yet been fully tested for commercial shipping although as I have already commented elsewhere a number of cruise companies are traversing this passage – another adventure for the future for me?.  Its expected that once the Northwest Passage is developed it will serve as major trade route between Europe and Asia.

I rememebr from my trip tp the Antarctic in 2011 that one of these nuclear ice breakers was recalled to help in opening the Northwest Passage.  It had to be towed back since the warm waters of the Equator and Tropics meant that its nuclear power plant could not be adequately cooled!!  You can just see one of this fleet of icebreakes in the photo.