What a Snotter
Latest update from Crown Bay – by Anton Bowring I’m an optimist. If I see a half glass of beer, I’ll drink it. Today turned out to be half a day. In my book it was a good one. Others were frustrated that we didn’t achieve more. There was still a swell but cautiously we nosed into the shelf at 07.30 and started work. Large lumps of ice fell into the sea around us but the loading platform stayed…
Testing the Fuel Scoots
The first blog from Richmond Dykes…ever. Yesterday was the first day since unloading the ship of the fuel drums and pumping them into the flubbers that have had time to do anything with the fuel scoots. The day started off by checking over and warming up the Cats before work commenced; Ran, Ian, Spencer and myself then proceeded to unpack all the ropes that were supplied and laid them out on…
“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…
Antarctica Proves a Dangerous Place for One Expedition Member
(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…
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…
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