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We really are living the dream out here. Yet another fantastic day yesterday with wildlife sightings from the bridge occurring all afternoon. That people are still pulling their cameras out to try to capture that special iceberg, or that emperor penguin or seal on the ice flow says a lot for the beauty that surrounds us each day of the voyage. Even those who have been down here many times before, or who have just spent six months or more here are still reaching for their camera. As anticipation of our arrival at Davis increases I'm sure that the guys on the bridge are feeling a bit like it's groundhog day - "what time will we get there?", "can we see Davis yet?", "will we be there in the morning?" is the only variety of conversation they get at the moment. The road into Davis has been nothing less than spectacular showing us a great variety of sea ice, however just like waiting for Santa we will have to wait a little longer for Davis. Last night at about 9pm our time we found ourselves in another patch of ice that we couldn't get through. Again it was 10/10ths consolidated pack ice (big plates of ice squashed tightly together with only occasional runs of re-freezing water between them) heaped with new snow. After we had chosen our path from satellite ice imagery, the easterly wind had pushed the ice against an enormous iceberg (55km long) and there was no way through - the road that we had seen on our ice images was now closed. We performed a tight U turn - a sight to be beheld in a 94 metre long orange icebreaker - and headed north again to take the alternate road to Davis. While our days run distance is 168 nm we only made 112 nm progress towards Davis - the rest was spent backtracking to the new route that we could see on updated images. We are through that section of ice now, and at this time we hope to be waving to our friends ashore later this evening. The phone lines and email have been buzzing between the ship and Davis as those last minute things are cleared up and plans are finalised. Now we are preparing to change those plans as the latest weather forecast brings bad news for us - high winds and little chance of completing our flying program at Davis. Cheers, Nicki, Rob and Peter.
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.