Winterlane

One hard Baltic winter, one icebreaker, and a bight that freezes shut behind you. You have a helm bar and an engine telegraph: ring FULL AHEAD and the ram bow shoulders into the pack until plates crack outward in radiating lines, tilt, and raft down your hull. The channels you cut are real — they persist, drift and refreeze, narrowing from the edges while your convoy is still strung out astern. Six months of cutting fairways, ramming pressure ridges, and answering PAN PAN from ships beset with the ice closing round them. A gale can slam a channel shut in minutes.