“What a swell parting this is!” – by Anton Bowring
My report this evening is short. Although it was yet another beautiful day, first the sea ice and then a low but effective swell kept us out of Crown Bay for most of the day. There was nothing to do except prowl up and down peering, when possible, through binoculars at the black dots which were our colleagues on the remains of the ice shelf. Although it didn’t seem risky to nose into the head of…
Update from aboard the SA Agulhas – by Anton Bowring
We have consoled ourselves in the knowledge that we had an unusually good week since we arrived in Crown Bay. It is unfortunate but not entirely surprising that our luck would run out. For the second day we have not been able to get at our berth against the ice shelf. It is made all the more frustrating by the fact that today was a beautiful day – a beautiful day for unloading drums – if only w…
Choosing the Moment
By Brian Newham It was a grey and breezy start to the day but, more importantly, the bay was still full of tightly packed sea-ice. It looked very unlikely that the ship would be able to reach us and it wasn’t long before a chat on the radio with the ship’s bridge confirmed the news. It’s a frustrating fact of life down here that you have to remain flexible and make the most of conditions when…
Off Ice – by Anton Bowring
It has been a frustrating day. In my report yesterday I made a foolish comment about being irritatingly smug on account of the fine weather. Well, today, all that changed. The wind swung round to the north east overnight and pressed all the sea ice into the bay. This meant that, on the ship, we could only look at the tiny black dots, our Ice Group, on the distant shore and wonder how they wer…
“First Night Ashore” – by Brian Newham
As followers will know, the Ice Team spent their first night ashore in their new home last night. To be honest, the caboose assembly wasn’t quite ready for this move but it did give us the opportunity to keep pushing the work forward without worrying about retreating to the ship every night or worrying about the ice which has invaded the bay sporadically over the last few days and caused the s…
Time Lapse Video Showing Cadets Ashore and Vast Ice Sheet
Click the link to see the latest time lapse from Antarctica, showing the SA Agulhas in Crown Bay whilst a large chunk of shelf ice crosses from right to left in the background. It’s difficult to appreciate the scale of it from the GoPro footage, but we estimate it was in the region of 500m long and travelled 1.5km during the 1.5hours of the time lapse footage. So a very large lump of ic…
Everything’s Going to Plan
A risk of sounding irritatingly smug, we had another beautiful day today. There was great industry from the outset. It was warm enough to work without gloves and everyone seemed to be in possession of an electric drill and focussed on the cabooses, fixing everything down against the ravages of weather that lie ahead. Everywhere you looked there were people up ladders, on their backs under t…
Making Progress
By Anton Bowring: The sea ice cleared the bay overnight so that we could land the support team at 8am as usual. The crane is busy unloading full drums and re-loading the empties. Up the track towards the depot lines, work continues to prepare the living caboose and the science caboose for the Ice Group to move in. The big job is getting the padded tea cosies to fit over each caboose tightly and…
A Close Shave – by Anton Bowring
(Please note this update was written late last night, and relates to events which happened yesterday. Due to comms limitations over night, we could only upload it this morning) We remained nosed into the ice shelf by our unloading site all night. It was very calm and the ship remained in position without buffeting. Today started as usual. At 8 am the basket was swinging over the ship’s side and…
Spencer Smirl’s Reflects on Life Since South Africa
It has been 15 days since we all left Cape Town, getting out to sea to begin the adventure of a lifetime. We arrived at Crown Bay in Antarctica on Sunday, 20th January. The ice was far too congested in the bay; it would have put the ship at huge risk of being pinned down if we entered and the ice flow shifted unfavourably. It was late afternoon on Sunday anyways, so we decided to wait till t…
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