18 December 2006
by Thomas MulcaireWe have had the smoothest sailing we could have wished for so far on this trip, which has allowed the Agulhas to cover almost 4500km in 10 days, and last night we arrived at the Antarctic ice shelf, 2 days ahead of our scheduled ETA. The ice shelf emits an aura of super-reality. The cliffs rise 20m-30m above the sea like rock but are in a constant state of change, some smoking, some slowly collapsing in slivers and others drifting away from the mothership in massive blocks the size of neighbourhoods. The strange blue light shining from the caves and recesses in the wall are so luminous it looks like the shelf has been electrified and filled with concealed stage-lights. But that wouldn't even explain the blue. It is bright and dim at the same time, alive somehow. Anton Feun (of the HMO) described it as being like the burning embers of a coal.
We weaved a course through the newly calved archipelago and along the shelf towards Neumayer, but as we approached the base the Agulhas was blocked by thick pack ice stretching across the entrance to Akta Bukta (the bay in which Neumayer nestles). We are within 7km of our destination and have been stopped. This morning we woke up in the same position as when we turned in yesterday evening. The permanent daylight added to the Groundhog effect. We had sailed through the night going nowhere. It is too dangerous to drift in the open sea in front of the bay and not shallow enough to drop anchor. A fog has also descended. So the Agulhas is doing laps in front of Akta Bukta at 3 knots (about 5 km/h). The helicopter pilots are waiting for the weather to clear so they can conduct an aerial reconnaissance of the bay. If there are any cracks or openings in the middle of the bay there is a chance the Agulhas can drive through towards the opening and break a path into the bay. The risk is that if the weather worsens the Agulhas may become trapped in the ice and have to drift until the pack melts later in the summer. A Swedish research and resupply vessel is showing up on the radar about 20 miles west of our position. It is stuck in the pack ice. The crew of the Agulhas appears to have adopted a wait and see approach until the weather improves. This has given us the strange feeling of not needing to do anything in terms of documentation today. We have been spoiled the past 10 days with new sights and sounds to record every time we go out on deck. But today, with the scenery fixed, we spent some time relaxing in our cabin in the morning and concentrating on tweaking the website this afternoon. The spare time has given us a chance to look more closely at what we've posted over the past 10 days and to reflect on the structure of the site a bit more.
18 December 2006
by Adam HydeWe are at the footsteps of the continent. The walls of ice now are gigantic. Just four days ago a few meters of ice would be photographed at least a dozen times by the crew and passengers by the time it had floated down the length of the boat. Now we are spoilt for ice. Huge motionless icebergs surround us with sheer cliffs falling to the sea. Some have the appearance of being on fire as the strong winds whip the loose ice off the windward cliff edges in a grey smokey haze. Icebergs on fire off the shoulders of Neumayer. This afternoon we slowly crawled by a piece of ice the size of Waiheke Island. It is by no means the biggest iceberg here but distance and size is hard to judge when measuring white cliffs against a white sea and light grey sky. We can only judge the size of the ice that comes close to the ship and these are impressive. I wonder if it was these chunks of the ice shelf that Cook refered to as ice islands.
However it looks like we may have time to become quite familiar with these particular icebergs. Round and round we go at a crawl...11 miles from Neumayer but there is no opening in the ice that we can go through. The sea is too deep to anchor and the captain judges it better to be under our own power than to drift. So we crawl round and round in huge circles. We don't know how long it will take, there has been mention that we could spend Christmas on the boat. No one wants this. The entire journey we have been amazed at how lucky we have been with the weather. We have faced no storms and the pack ice was cleared early by swells only a few weeks before we arrived. By all counts we arrived here at least 2 days ahead of schedule. Now it seems our 4500km journey will be stalled just 11 miles from home. As a result I think everyone has gone a smidgen stir crazy. The bird counter looked a bit deranged as he has been sitting upstairs counting birds for 10 days to calculate approximate bird populations through the areas we have travelled. But now he is surrounded by birds and cant count them otherwise the results would be skewed as we are circling the same area.
The captain looks bored, I saw the ships doctor cleaning the keyboard of the libraries PC muttering something about possible diseases one could catch through unhygienic computing. First Born has gone to sleep early (its 1920) to dream of trees. Outside my cabin door Bob Marley is reassuring everyone that everything will be alright and I can hear the overly dramatic slapping of dominoes from the ships bar at the end of the corridor. In short, there is nothing to be done. The scientists calculate the possible research days they may lose, and the ships crew paint unnecessarily while they wait for the well paid overtime hours they will work once docked. Everyone wants to get to shore.
In the meantime the I-TASC crew devises strategies to inform people of what we are doing and argue about whether the website jpeg should show the feet of Ladimur or not. I think it would do us all good to put our feet on firm ground...