January 2013

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…

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…

(Words and photographs by Jill Bowring) Mary, much to her chagrin, was banned by everyone from going ashore – it was just far too dangerous. There were fuel pumps that she could have been sucked up by and put into a flubber; there were Caterpillars , tractors, snow cats, skidoos, sledges and scoots, all of which co…uld have run over her. There were cardboard boxes, metal boxes and wooden ones…

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…

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…

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…

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…

We were very saddened to hear the news of the three Canadians whose plane went missing and has now been discovered on the side of Mt Elizabeth, Antarctica. The reports have not confirmed their deaths, but given the nature and position of the crash they have been presumed dead. This is a tragedy which will rock the communities not just in their homeland of Canada, but across the Antarctic…

(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…