Thanks Dirk. I spent two and a half weeks on the Ioffe a couple of years ago on an Antarctic cruise and was impressed at the professionalism of the Russian crew and the way that they needed to be constantly on their toes and flexible in terms of forward planning to cope with weather and icing conditions. It will be interesting to see what the root cause was. I was told that the ship's history as a Russian "research" vessel means that she and the Vavilov are still not allowed into US ports, but I'm not sure whether that's still the case. Anyway, you'll find a couple of photos on here of the Ioffe taken by me down south in December 2016 - I still drift away when I think of me and Mrs Pegpilot standing on a South Georgia beach with half a million penguins. Did it really happen ?