Information
Comments
It seems slightly odd that upon arriving in a beautiful and pristine place such as the Vestfold Hills, our first act of greeting should be to give it a severe head butt. But that is exactly what we did at 12:00 today when we finally emerged from the pack ice to see the familiar long line of icebergs guarding the entrance to the snowy brown hills surrounding Davis Station.
With Naomi at the helm, we lined up on the fast ice and gave it a damn good whack. To our surprise, the ice gave way before the ship like butter under the knife and, in a long drawn out motion, the ship kept going for fully 2 nautical miles before we finally came to rest on a natural discontinuity in the ice.
We backed up and gave it a second hit only to slide forward majestically less than one ships length. After a few more whacks with the same result, we did some quick calculations about how long it was going to take to travel the remaining 2.4 nautical miles and decided to launch helicopters instead.
During the course of the afternoon, we managed to send 33 people and their bags into the station before resuming ice breaking around 6pm. And breaking is what we have been doing ever since. Every few minutes the ship has convulsions as it rides up onto the ice and breaks forward another 100 metres or so.
At this rate we might be in the final position by breakfast. But it's going to be a long night...
Lloyd and Andrew
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.