When selecting a route through an area of broken pack ice without icebreaker escort, what should the OOW prioritise when choosing between visible paths?

A. Leads (channels of open or thinner water within the pack) and areas of lower ice concentration, even if this means a less direct track than heading straight for the destination — following the path of least ice resistance generally allows safer, more sustainable progress than forcing a more direct route through heavier concentration, and leads can also close, so timing and a fallback plan matter

B. Ice concentration and the presence of leads have no bearing on route selection; any path through pack ice presents identical risk

C. Leads, once identified, remain permanently open and require no further monitoring once a route has been chosen

D. The most direct route to the destination should always be chosen regardless of ice concentration or the presence of leads

A. Once an icebreaker has passed through an area, the channel remains open indefinitely with no risk of re-closing behind it

B. Following distance and channel position have no practical bearing on the difficulty of ice the following vessel will encounter

C. The following vessel should always travel well outside the broken channel to avoid the icebreaker's wash, regardless of the harder ice this involves

D. Maintaining a safe following distance and staying accurately within the broken channel the icebreaker has created, since ice at the channel edges (or ice that has begun to close back in behind the icebreaker) is far more resistant than the freshly broken channel itself — straying from the channel risks the vessel encountering significantly harder, unbroken ice than the icebreaker's passage was calculated to manage

A. Following distance has no meaningful safety trade-off; any distance is equally safe regardless of ice conditions

B. Following too closely risks collision with the icebreaker if it slows or stops suddenly (e.g. encountering a particularly difficult ice ridge), while following too far back risks the broken channel beginning to close in behind the icebreaker before the following vessel reaches that section, exposing it to harder ice than intended — the appropriate distance depends on ice conditions, vessel manoeuvrability, and communication with the icebreaker, not a single fixed rule

C. Following too far back is always safer than following too closely, with no risk of the channel closing in over that distance

D. Following too closely is always safer than following too far back, with no countervailing collision risk to consider