This exotic is extraordinarily exotic.   Any guesses based on appearance of  the red and white vessel below?

I’ll give a little more time to study while you prepare your guess.   Given her specs, which I share below, she’s not for offshore wind or the sixth boro, unless we have extraordinary weather  ahead.

I wish I’d been able to get closer, but 

that’s why I have a distance-shrinking lens.

Built in 2006 by Vard Langsten in Tomrefjord Norway with some construction at the Vard yard on the Black Sea in Romania, for the Russian Federation, the 243′ x 56′ icebreaker (technically, icebreaking tug) Polar Circle sailed into the sixth boro in 86-degree F weather.    The Vard facility in Romania is about 40 miles up the Danube from the Black Sea.

Previously she was home-ported in Kholmst, Sakhalin, formerly Maoka in Japanese Sakhalin.  At some recent point, she left there, registered Maltese (or maybe she was registered Maltese while up in eastern Russia, and she arrived in the sixth boro after a month-and-22-day voyage from Busan Korea.  Click here for more info and great photos of her in ice.  A previous name was Polar Pevek, “Pevek” being a settlement on the “north coast” of Russian, above the Arctic Circle.  

I’m wondering if there’s any connection between her arrival here and the “embargo” on Russian gas/oil.  Here her Norwegian owner lists her as available for charter. 

 

 

All photos, yesterday, WVD, whose previous major ice breaker photos are listed below.

Fennica and Nordica here and here.

Mackinaw and Polar Star and Sea.  I never did get closer photos. 

And a surprising set, scroll through for Soviet-era icebreakers built in St. Louis MO!!