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We are at Mawson. We are not waiting anymore – we have sprung into action after a big day of hurry up and wait yesterday. With the break in weather that we had been waiting for arriving yesterday afternoon we dashed in to Mawson to make the most of the low winds throughout the afternoon and evening. The ship was ready, the people on rosters were ready and the station was eagerly awaiting our re-appearance to commence refueling setup and cargo operations. Unfortunately someone must have run over a black cat (or three) because from there on our day went downhill fast. The iceberg moved back in to the entrance of the harbour on the high tide and the ship was not able to anchor anywhere else because of the smooth bottom, depth and shape of the Mawson region. We now have to find a way to tie the ship up in order to refuel this station rather than holding at anchor as we had planned. While working through this little problem our LIPS died (the ship’s automatic positioning system) and we were not able to continue operations yesterday. We moved the minimal refueling gear ashore to let that crew get started with deployment and then came back out to the ice to get the problems sorted – and hopefully make it back in during this weather window. Many of our job descriptions express the requirement for us to be ‘flexible and innovative’ - we have really seen this in action during this trip – thankyou to everyone involved for giving this all you’ve got. We are currently preparing to move back in towards Mawson and commence Plan K (Plans A, B, C etc are long gone)! We are going to attempt to tie up on the outside of West Arm and run our fuel line over the top into Horseshoe Harbour and into the Mawson fuel farm. 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.