AMUNDSEN GULF, N.W.T. -- You know that scraping sound when you drive your car over a badly cleared road and the chassis bottoms out on the ice?
Imagine doing something similar with a 98-metre-long, 8,000-tonne chunk of steel on the frozen surface of an Arctic gulf.
Canadian Coast Guard shipmate Stephan Massicotte clears snow from the deck of the icebreaker The Amundsen.
The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen, stationed in the Arctic all winter, can steadily plow through a metre of ice at a speed of six knots, which is about 11 km/h.
But the actual process of moving across a frozen surface is rarely one, long fluid movement.
The Amundsen lurches along the same way a Honda Civic gets out of a back lane after a blizzard -- by moving forward and backward and then forward again, conquering ice ridges as high as three metres.
On a brilliantly sunny Saturday, executive officer René Hardy sits in the port side of the bridge with his right hand on the throttle of the diesel-electric ship.
On this particular day, the Amundsen wants to move as far east as possible in the hopes of stopping in a patch of hard coastal ice to allow scientists on-board to set up camp and conduct research.
One-metre thick chunks of ice form patterns in Amundsen Gulf, N.W.T.
With no significant wind and clear visibility, the conditions are perfect for breaking ice. Hardy keeps the boat moving at around six knots while quartermaster Raynald Cotton steers the ship into flat spots between higher, less-easily-passable ridges.
The presence of some open water all winter in Amundsen Gulf makes this body of water passable for a medium-class, 14,000-horsepower icebreaker like the Amundsen, the only Canadian ship overwintering in the Arctic this year.
The gulf is home to flaw leads, which are gaps in the ice that form when temporary winter ice moves away from the harder, thicker ice that forms against the coast.
The Amundsen would not be able to move around as easily in the more treacherous waters of the open Arctic Ocean, where multi-year ice gets three or four metres thick and ridges can be much higher.
But even in the gulf waters, the ship encounters ridges. When that happens, Hardy increases the throttle to nine knots to allow the bow of the boat to ride up on the ice and exert pressure from above.
But as the ship's progress slows, he puts the ship in reverse.
"Once it gets down to two knots, I have to go back because I don't want to get stuck," says Hardy, the second-highest-ranking officer on-board.
The boat reverses its course in the same channel it created, retreating the length of a football field. It then speeds back ahead and takes another run at the ridge, which has already been weakened by the weight of the ship.
Inside the boat, the start-stop process goes all but unnoticed by the 70 scientists and Coast Guard personnel aboard.
When the ship is moving steadily ahead, you can hear a long scraping sound in the forward section of the boat.
You can also feel rumbling throughout the ship, but there is very little in the way of violent swaying: Coffee cups and pens and computers remain in place on flat surfaces, though chairs with wheels slide around a bit in cabins.
On windier days, the process becomes much more difficult. Calm weather allows broken ice fragments to drift apart like bath toys in a tub, but high winds can press large fragments against the boat, which may in turn exert a dangerous amount of pressure on the hull.
Though ice is brittle and easily broken from above, it's a lot tougher to crack from the side.
That's why the ship tries to steer as clear as possible from potential trouble spots. Even on this sunny Saturday, the ship's captain and chief scientific officer have flown up in the Amundsen's helicopter on a reconnaissance mission, scouting out ice conditions as far away as 80 kilometres from the boat.
"I have to go where it's easy, because of the ridges," Hardy says. "Otherwise, it's not fun."
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