Beautiful Sunday: sailing regatta and icebreakers

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The Icebreakers Festival is taking place in our city this week. It's not the most lavish and spectacular celebration, but I really like the idea of this festival. During the festival several icebreakers come to the city, they moor near the quay and everyone can climb aboard these ships and see with their own eyes how life is organised aboard the icebreakers.

We had conspired with @qwerrie to meet on the waterfront for a walk together. But we almost changed our plans! The weather in the morning was very uncomfortable. Dark clouds were coming in from the bay and a piercing, icy wind was blowing. I have purposely added to this story a photo taken that morning. I was standing at the bus stop, hoping to be on the bus before the clouds reached me, which had already covered half of the sky.

But by late afternoon there was not even a memory of all the scary clouds. A bright blue sky overhead and only light clouds for a change near the horizon. The announcements stated that a sailing regatta was due to start at 6pm near the Annunciation Bridge. We didn't know which side of the bridge the regatta would take place on, so we peered carefully into the distance. Finally we spotted the sails in the distance, against the background of the harbour cranes. Soon the yachts came close enough for us to view them in some detail.

Perhaps this musician will eventually become famous and go on world tours - but he records his first videos on the Neva embankment against the background of the bridge.

From the bridge we walked along the bank to the part of the embankment where the icebreakers were standing. This time there were a lot of people wanting to go up to the decks of the icebreakers. We did not compete with families with children and limited ourselves to a stroll along the quay.

In total, three icebreakers participated in the holiday: "Vladivostok", "Captain Zarubin" and "Captain Sorokin". "Vladivostok" is a powerful diesel-electric double-deck icebreaker. This icebreaker was launched in 2014. It is used in the Baltic Sea in winter and in the Arctic seas in summer and autumn. The icebreaker Kapitan Zarubin looks like a small vessel against its backdrop - it is designed to operate in the limited water areas of port facilities. The icebreaker Kapitan Sorokin is a veteran of the icebreaking fleet and has been operating in the northern seas since 1977.