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We had a very good day of flying operations yesterday, even though we lost three hours due to snow showers, which caused our visibility to drop quite low for a while. We transferred ashore 24 expeditioners, which consisted of 10 operational support personnel and 14 of the 15 ingoing Mawson winterers. We also transferred ashore over 2300Kg of cargo ashore.
If you were to take a picture for a postcard of Antarctica, the view from the current position of the ship would be very high on the list of chosen photos. The sun is shining, there's not a cloud in the sky and the winds are light. We moved the ship this morning to a spot that has us 4nm closer to Mawson than our previous location. The spot we are now in is an area with many grounded large icebergs surrounded by fast ice. We have been able to park the ship in the fast ice. I'm pretty confident that our office window has one of the best views in the world right now!
We are continuing helicopter operations today and will be moving cargo ashore all day. We have just completed the discharge of one 20' container of cargo, and are about to commence the sling loading of 1000L Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBCs) ashore. These IBCs have been pre-loaded with the stations required Special Antarctic Blend (SAB) diesel fuel, which is used on station for power generation. As I type this the first of these IBCs has just been sling loaded off the AAs helideck.
Happy birthday to our 2nd Engineer Jason!
Cheers,
Deepy and Brett
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.