This May, three mighty ships will steam into the mouth of St. Petersburg’s Neva River and rendezvous with the historic Krasin icebreaker and the curious public at the second annual Icebreaker Festival. Moored across from each other on the English Embankment and the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment, the four icebreakers can be boarded and inspected by visitors from May 1-3.

The first festival, in 2014, celebrated 150 years from the time when Mikhail Britnev, working at the Kronstadt shipyard, added the first metal hull to an existing ship, Pilot, and created the first icebreaker.

In 2015, three modern icebreakers will join the historic 1916 museum icebreaker Krasin on the banks of the Bolshaya Neva River. They are the diesel-powered Ivan Krusenshtern, built in 1964, and the two Moskva-class diesel-electric icebreakers, the Moskva and the Sankt Petersburg. These two ships, built in St. Petersburg’s Baltisky shipyard in 2009 and 2010, are designed to escort tankers, help with salvage and Arctic rescue operations, clean up spills and fight fires in the increasingly accessible northern shipping lanes.

Travel to St. Petersburg with MIRMIR has more than 25 years of experience hand-crafting tours to St. Petersburg, Western Russia and beyond. MIR’s Private Journey team has the destination expertise to arrange a visit to a local festival as part of a custom, private trip through our destinations. MIR also has a variety of small group tours, independent private journeys, and a rail journey by private train that include time in St. Petersburg, Russia.

(Top photo:  The Krasin icebreaker, moored in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo credit: Alfiya Izmailova)

PUBLISHED: March 26, 2015

Tags: boats | custom private journeys | festivals | Icebreaker | Icebreaker Festival | Neva River | Russia | ships | St. Petersburg | Western Russia

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