Repair a ship’s hull still in the river in -50˚C (2022)

Summary

Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature (and a spot of -50° adventure). Hi folks! After our overnight stay in Khandyga, it was back on the road and heading for Yakutsk. Thing is – that stretch of road to Yakutsk was so thoroughly boring that there’s absolutely nothing of interest to report to you, dear readers. Accordingly, I’ve fast-forwarded to Yakutsk; for there can never be anything boring about the extraordinary Siberian city of Yakutsk… Here‘s a primer for what the city’s all about – from last year. We basically repeated much of the itinerary detailed in that post, so I won’t duplicate here. As to this year’s novelty… We visited… the dockyard of Zhatay, just outside Yakutsk. A dockyard? Eh?! How could that possibly be of interest to a group of very well-traveled – seen-practically-everything – tourists? Actually… Meanwhile, here’s the Lensky Fleet… …Actually, there is something unique about these river docks. Soon, 100 – 130 boats/ships will be navigating the Lena river here. But some need repairing… However, there aren’t enough dry-docks here – the kind you need to access and repair the underside of a ship, the propellers, etc. So they came up with a unique alternative to dry-docks. Simply put – they cut away the ice around the part that needs to be accessed! Kinda like this: But it’s not that straightforward. What they have to do is cut away a layer at a time, gradually. They first cut away – rather, saw away, with a chainsaw – the top layer of ice. Then they wait – for the river water underneath to freeze to the required depth, and they go again at the newly-formed ice with the chainsaw, on and on like that until the part of the ship that needs working on becomes accessible: I’m sure maritime-naval...