During September 1983 an unusually early freeze-up and persistent northwesterly winds that drove heavy multi-year ice int Longa and against the north coast of Chukotka resulted in a critical situation with regard to shipping in the Soviet eastern Arctic. Ports Zelenyy My s and My s Shmidta were prematurely closed by ice, leaving Pevek as the only functioning port in this part of the Arctic. Worse dozens of ships were beset in the ice at various points from the mouth of the Indigirka east to Bering Strait. One freighter, Nina Sagayd crushed and sank near Kosa Dvukh Pilotov on 8 October; a sister ship, Kolya Myagotin, was badly holed and barely managed to limp out of the tic. Practically all available ice breakers, including the nuclear-powered icebreakers Lenin, Leonid Brezhnev and Sibir', were transferred f western to the eastern Arctic to free the jammed ships. Ultimately all were rescued, but it was late November before the last ship sailed from Many ships were forced to head west from Pevek to the Atlantic, rather than attempt to battle their way through the heavy ice in Proliv Longa to return to their Pacific home ports. Singled out for particular praise in Soviet post-mortems of the crisis were the nuclear-powered icebreake the new Noril'sk class (SA-15) icebreaking freighters, several of which came straight from the Finnish shipyards to help rectify the situatio eastern Arctic.