The Renda tanker of the high ice category made a more than 30-kilometer corridor in the ice and helped out the ship registered in the port of Bremen.
The Passat of more than 5,000 tons of displacement was bringing a consignment of cargo from the Sakhalin port of Korsakov to South Korean Pusan.
Instead of moving directly to southwest, to the Sea of Japan, the German ship decided to bypass the ice fields and, as a result, found itself much more to the east, in the Sea of Okhotsk, 32 miles to the southeast of Sakhalin. The captain of the Passat made an SOS signal to which the Renda tanker responded.
The German ship with 14 members of the crew, is now moving to the Friz Strait between the Kuril Islands of Urup and Iturup. Then, in the Pacific Ocean it will head towards Japan along the international Sangar Strait between the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu and will at last reach the South Korean port of Pusan, the spokesman added.
