On January 21, 2009 at 08:00 a.m. (Vladivostok local time) the Vasily Golovnin departed the station General Belgrano II heading to Orcadas (another polar station of Argentina). The vessel is schedule for arrival to Orcadas on January 30th, 2009 depending on the ice condition during the transit. The m/v Vasily Golovnin will leave the ice-breaker the Kapitan Dranitsyn off the cape Norvegia and proceed further alone.
Today the Vasily Golovnin is an only vessel in the world to be located at the southern extremity. Her position as of January 21, 2009 at 07:00 a.m. (Vladivostok time) is as follows: 77° 45’SLon.,WLat.
According to Iksan Yusupov, Master, on January 20th the vessel completed unloading cargo at the station General Belgrano II. This polar station of Argentina is one of the new ones, it was founded in 1978. There used to be another stations with the same name — General Belgrano I (in 1983 the station was snowed and got inaccessible) and General Belgrano III located on the glacier. In 1989 a part of the glacier split off the continent and the station drifted in the ocean and got lost. There were also a German, an English and the Soviet stations on the same split glacier of 190 km in length and 70 km in breadth. The polar explorers from the stations were rescued in time. The station General Belgrano II is located 12,5 miles off shore on the stony plateau where the wind blows off the snow making it safe from the grievous fate of the previous two stations.
Master Yusupov informed that “the cargo was discharged completely at the station General Belgrano II and it had taken three working days. The total lay time at the station amounted 5 days due to 2 bad weather days”.
Photo of Iksan Yusupov, Master of the m/v Vasily Golovnin.