During an escorted transit, the OOW notices the broken channel is closing in behind the icebreaker faster than the following vessel can maintain pace, with the gap to the icebreaker increasing. What should the OOW do?

A. Increase speed and push directly through the closing ice without informing the icebreaker, to avoid the appearance of being unable to keep pace

B. Take no action since the icebreaker is solely responsible for monitoring whether the following vessel is keeping pace

C. Communicate the developing situation to the icebreaker immediately and request a speed/route adjustment, rather than silently attempting to push through closing ice alone to catch up — escalating early, while there is still some open channel remaining, gives the best chance of the icebreaker being able to assist before the following vessel becomes properly beset

D. Wait until the vessel has become fully beset before communicating anything to the icebreaker

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