Master Mariner

By MasterMariner

Ice Navigation

The arctic temperatures brought a lot of ice and skating fun for a lot of people, but that's not all; it brought a lot of work for a lot of people as well. What you see here are the two buoy tenders of Terschelling, responsible for a safe navigation through shallows, sandbanks and so on by means of buoys. A regular buoy configuration consists of a concrete block and a big buoy connected by a chain. The concrete block is lowered on the seafloor and is heavy enough to keep the buoy at its exact location, current or no current. But the resistance by means of moving ice floes is a little bit to much for the concrete blocks, the buoys will start drifting. If heavy ice is expected, the buoy tenders have to replace all the buoys for smaller and slimmer buoys, having a lot less resistance in the moving ice. It is an awful lot of work, but they managed to have all big buoys replaced by ice buoys in time. Hats off for these crews. You can see the summer buoys blinking on the shore behind the tenders.
Better see this one in Large

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