After renovation and repair work, the Port of Vienna’s icebreaker ship “MS Eisvogel” has returned to its home base in the port of Freudenau. The extensive work on the ship was needed after a smoldering fire at the beginning of the year, which had caused extensive damage to the icebreaker.
On November 8, the refurbished “MS Eisvogel” was presented to the public with a photo opportunity with Peter Hanke, Managing Director of Wien Holding, as well as Fritz Lehr and Doris Pulker-Rohrhofer.
The 32-meter-long and six and a half-meter wide icebreaker weighs in at 80 tonnes. Up to 12 millimeters thick steel protects the hull from the sharp, hard ice edges. The 520 hp diesel engines push the ‘colossus’ forward at a walking pace, meter by meter. If the ice becomes even thicker, then the “Eisvogel” can additionally take up about 30 tonnes of water ballast. The ship then heaves onto the ice plate and breaks it to pieces with its own weight. Up to 60 centimeters thick ice layers can be broken.
As the largest port of the Danube in Austria, and one of the most important Danube ports in Europe, the port of Vienna must be open to ships, as well as for goods transhipped by rail and trucks, also in winter. After all, about one third of the approximately 1,100 cargo ships that are handled each year in the port of Vienna, also here in the winter months.
Moreover the port of Freudenau also serves as a protection and winter port. Cruising ships are already docked on the wharf, so they can safely ‘hibernate’ until spring. Therefore, the “MS Eisvogel” must regularly move out in cold winters to break ice, so that the dangerous ice pressure does not damage the hulls of the anchored Danube cruisers.
