Arctic Travel Forum

The Professor Molchanov, Professor Multanovskiy and Grigoriy Mikheev are small Russian ships that are used by many adventure touring companies for trips to the Arctic, Antarctic, the Galapagos and other destinations. Has anyone sailed on one of these ships? How were the accomodations? How did they handle the rough seas in the Drake Passage and the North Atlantic/ How did the wet landings with the zodiacs work out?

Please send me a response to my regular EMail address, rratney@brahmacom.com as well as posting to this forum.

Ron

have not been travelling oon the ships, but live in spitsbergen, arctic where this ships are sailing in the summer. do not htink you are travelling over the sea with the ships, you travel by air up to spitsbergen and then get on, but thats just for spitsbergen, the atlantic sea is a ruff sea,but not as bad as the trips from argentina to antarctic.the ships are nice and good food, when you leave the ships in those zodiacs its good conditions, they will not let the guest out if its not safe...will also recoment polarstar( karlsenshipping.com) or nordstjernen ( spitsbergentravel.no) for trips in the arctic..good luck..

I know I am late, but I have just returned from a trip to the Arctic on the Professor Molchanov. It was fabulous!!! It is a small ship, so rough seas are rough - although we were lucky and had rather calm seas throughout our voyage.

The zodiac landings were perfect, they have very skilled zodiac drivers and helpful staff as well, so not even I had problems (which I thought I would have!!!)

The accomodation was good, very clean, we shared a 3 berth cabin, which was very small, but clean and most of the time we spent on the bridge, in the bar/group room or outside anyway!

I would HIGHLY recommend this ship, but not necessarily for the Drake passage... As wonderful as it is, it is still a small ship!!!

The majority of both Antarctic & Artic cruises are Russian-dominated so I don't think you will have too much problems.
I took an Antarctica cruise in 2002 through Peregrine Adventures and highly recommend it. I am doing the Svalbard Artic cruise this month/July with the same company.
As these ships are Russian-registry, the staff is also Russian. They are very friendly (even if most don't speak English). The chef is usually European/non-Russian.
Look for my Artic travelogue after August 10 when I return.