On Top of the World:
 The 2008 North Pole And Solar Eclipse Voyage
 on the Nuclear Icebreaker I/B “Yamal”
2008 North Pole/Solar Eclipse Voyage.

Expedition-team.

Moscow highlights.

Yamal.

Franz Joseph Land.

Into the Arctic Ice.

On Top of the World.

Heading back.

Polar Bear Gallery.

Rubini and Tikhaya.

Solar Eclipse and Walruses.

Last days of the Voyage.

Arctic Video's.

Astrospace Home.

I/B Yamal and the voyage begins...
The next day after a whistle stop tour of Moscow, we flew to Murmansk where we joined the I/B Yamal by late afternoon. The Moscow tour included many notable sights including a panoramic vista of Moscow FROM NEAR Moscow State University and also included a stop to see the Novodevichy Convent across a beautiful lake. There was a nice surprise for me as we also passed Yuri Gagarins statue on Leninskiy Prospekt - Yuri of couse was the first person to go into space and a great hero of mine regardless of nationality. After the tour we went to an airport (not sure whoich one) and flew to Murmansk where we joined a coach to take us to the Navel base where the I/B Yamal was docked. The Yamal is impressive in its red and black livery and especially with the teeth pained on the bow making it look fierce! It is 150 m long, 30 m in breadth and has a displacement of 23,450 tons! It can carry 150 crew and 100 passengers and is owned by the Russian Government and operated by Murmansk Shipping Company. It carries two Helicopters for making landings ashore and has a maximum speed of 19.5 knots. It certainly made light work of the ice we encountered! The slide show below covers a few images of the ship taken from the helicopter during some of the landings to show the ship in all its glory and to show some of the basic aspects including the cabin Phil and I shared, the Lecture room, some views of the Helicopter and aspects of the ships tour we had. It also includes the paper sign telling us how far we were from the Nuclear reactors!