Whale Heart by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

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Maratse pressed his face to the passenger window of Alasdair’s pickup and stared up at the Admiral Chichagov. The old Russian icebreaker, with its black hull and red and white superstructure, complete with rusty tears around the square salt-streaked windows. The icebreaker looked its age when compared to the sleek and forward-angled, white and silver-lined cruise ship berthed on the opposite side of the tourist dock, reaching out from the port of Ushuaia. Alasdair parked just beside the ramp leading from the dock to the Admiral Chichagov’s deck.

“Aye,” he said. “She’s a bit of a beast.”

“We can’t take that one?” Petra said, as she cast a short, but longing look at the modern cruise liner opposite the icebreaker.

“You could,” Alasdair said. “But you’d have to sail north from here. This is as far south as a ship like that can sail. She’s too pretty for where we’re going.”

“Hmm,” Maratse said.

“What’s that, mate?”

“It means he likes the ugly one,” Petra said. She opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the dock.

“She’s named after an old Russian admiral,” Alasdair said, as he and Maratse joined Petra. “Chichagov was an explorer. He went looking for the Northeast Passage in the mid-1700s. Didn’t find it. But he did find an English wife on retirement. Which, all things considered, was probably a lot more fun than freezing his nuts off in the Arctic. If you’ll excuse my crassness,” he said, with a dip of his head towards Petra.

“You’re excused,” she said.

“And what about the engines?” Maratse asked. He turned his head to look at the stern, noting the flat helicopter pad with the Chinese helicopter lashed to it, before following the black hull down to the waterline.

“She’s triple-screwed, diesel electric,” Alasdair said, tracing his hand from the stern to the bow as he talked. “Cruiser stern – with the helicopter pad, as you can see. The hangar is in front of that. The engine room is in the middle. She’s got four decks – the ones you can see above the main deck. A deck forecastle, with the smokestack behind it.” He pointed at the black-lipped and red-ringed white smokestack. “You can still see the shadow of the old hammer and sickle of the USSR.” He paused for a moment, as if there was more to tell, before moving his hand over the deck, dropping down towards the bow pointing at the low and sprawling buildings of the city. The mountains of Tierra del Fuego looked down on the port from where they stood, just outside the limits of the city. “Icebreaker bow,” he said. “Where the muscle is.”

“How thick?” Maratse asked.

“She’s got a Russian ice class LL2,” Alasdair said, with a scratch of his head. “So, she can break ice up to two metres thick. The captain likes to avoid icebreaking if possible. In fact, the general idea is to avoid the ice, putting in at ports like Rothera – where the British Antarctic Survey have their research station. That’s about as far south as we’ll go.

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