Мурманская миля. 2016, № 3.

ONBOARD THE RESEARCH VESSEL AH, NALIVKIN! Anna GAVRENKO Photo courtesy of the MAGE Archive Last year, the research vessel GEOLOG DMITRIY NALIVKIN celebrated its anniversary. We would like to dedicate the next section of our issue to one of the legendary vessels in Murmansk. Almost a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union flag was hoisted on board, and on March 15, 1985, the newly-built vessel arrived at the home port of Murmansk as the flagship of the research fleet operated by Marine Arctic Geological Expedition (MAGE). Two years before the vessel’s keel was laid down, Dm itriy Nalivkin passed away in Leningrad. He was a veteran of the industry since the Czarist era and an honored geo logist (a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences) who authored the firs t monograph entitled Geology of the USSR. It was decided to use his name fo r the vessel being built by order of the Soviet state at the Turku shipyard. As early as the design stage, employees of IMAGE (or Integrated Marine A rctic Geological Expedition as MAGE was called at the time) headed then by its chief engineer Gennady Kazanin had made a lot of amendments and improvements in the original design, and afterward they painstakingly monitored the w ork progress at the yard. A fter all, the long-awaited vessel was custom ized to meet specific needs fo r many years to come. In the decades tha t followed, th is flagsh ip of the MAGE flee t underwent a series of major conversions and remains an up -to -da te mobile labora tory fo r marine geophysicists today. “Ah, Nalivkin! First, we designed it, and then, when construction began, we were busy keeping tabs on it all the time, visiting the yard and a Moscow-based o ffice of the Finnish sh ipbuilding com pany,” recalls Gennady Kazanin. “ In late 1984, sea trials revealed a lot of noise in the ship. When I received a p rope lle r noise chart, it comp le te ly overlapped our seism ic signal. It was a big problem fo r the Finns, as they had never run any such trials. In the end, they installed three more powerful auxiliary engines, so we could shut down the main engine while running the survey and sw itch over to e lectric drive. The sailing was so quiet tha t it fe lt like walking on tip toes. Sure we don ’t use th is operation very often today, but we had to back then because the streamer was of a d iffe ren t kind .” Anothe r advantage of the NALIVKIN is th a t it is an ice- class vessel. Some funny th ings happened to me in the An ta rc tic where the ice cond itions can change in an instant. Just then we were busy w ith a g ravity study and had to tie up to the shore. At tha t point, Moscow sent a w ire tha t it was tim e to leave. We to o k a chance, though , and tied up. That n ight slushy snow began to fall, and the sea had frozen over at once. We sailed all n ight long and fina lly got th rough .