11 Aug 2017

SHO:Travelling through the Dmitry Laptev Strait

The highlights and the history of the Northern Sea Route, just keep coming.... after leaving the Medvezhy Islands, we headed north and then west through the Dmitry Laptev Strait. This is the southernmost Strait in the New Siberian Group of Islands. It connects the Laptev Sea with the East Siberian Sea. It is 115km long and approx. 50kms wide and is only 10 – 14 metres deep. It was named after Dmitry Laptev who discovered the Sea in 1740 when he was leader of one of the divisions of the Great Northern Expedition.

The Sea is ice covered for most of the year and we had been carefully studying our Ice Charts prior to entering the Strait and were fortunate that much of the ice had been dispersed by the North Easterly winds. We made two landings on Great Lyakhovsky Island, one at them at a Russian Weather Station, where we were hosted by a team of four weather observers, including a husband and wife team, who will work there for two years.