Well, I guess that depends on whether the ship is unable to get through
the ICE to the north, and has to go around in circles trying to keep in
the relatively open water, until the wind changes and the ice breaks free
enough to allow the ship through!
That's what the situation was
when this piece was written. See for yourself !
08:27 In case you hadn't guesed, it's pretty boring watching birds when there aren't any.
Really really boring bird obs since there's no birds, and no birds, and no birds ...
not even penguins. And no seals either. Just lots of thin ice with a few pretty cracks through it.
The clouds lately have been good. Just like at home. grey/white and fluffy, sort of sparse.
The only birds I've seen in this past few days are a couple of Southern Giant Petrels and a skua, sitting in the ice.
There is no Ice to sit in now. They look so funny when they try to walk. So unbalanced and ungainly.
There've been a few penguins, too. Adelies and Emperors.
Apart from these obs, and getting bored in many other ways (playing patience, reading the 'newspaper'), I've spent a bit of time playing table tennis. It's the only exercise I get, really. I haven't managed to do a 'workout' in the gym yet. How many days is it now ?
Having found the tap for plain, cold water now and missing breakfast, I don't think I'm putting on much weight anymore. Which is good.
The ice is still very flat, but with some bits of open water now. The blue sky and clouds reflect in it. It's mostly flat and grey, but there are small ridges where sheets have collided, and even some 'finger rafting' . That is where the sheets overlap each other, and some of one sheet slides over, and some under, the other. It leaves sometimes an almost perfectly rectangular 'fingering' pattern, like a nice join between two pieces of timber.
There's one iceberg fairly close now, on the left, and further away, one straight ahead and one to the right. I haven't looked behind. The one to the left is sort of sloped, on top, and has a sharp cliff and small plateu below it on one side. It is grey in the shadow of itself, except for the jagged edge. You could probably ski down it, but even at the lower edge, it'd be at least 10 metres above the water. The upper edge at least twice that. It's at least 3 times as long as it is high. It may be 3km away, I'm only guessing. But it's big. They all are.
The 90 km one that we saw (twice, or was it three times; and it will be seen again on future voyages) was not quite as spectacular. You can't get any impression in a photo anyway. The Amery Ice shelf yesterday was EVEN BIGGER and we got fairly close to it. You could even see the ice caves, we could've driven the ship into one but it'd be a bit hard to explain how it got stuck there ... It's not even permitted to explore them, cos of the risk of them falling in. But people do. No-one usually gets to set foot on an iceberg. I don't know why Tim Bowden did. He's not particularly popular on this ship. Next trip (?) there'll be a lot of politicians on board. So, everyone has to behave, and they're hoping the ship won't break down. Humph. Like I said, still no birds.
There's a few bigger pancakes of ice in small patches now, and the thin ice. The pancakes have snow on top. The sun is shining brightly and I'm boiling here, and this PC is hot too. I am still amazed that the ice doesn't melt. A lot of the ice work is radiation studies - the snow reflects more light and hence the ice melts slower ? perhaps. It's either a positive or negative feedback loop, the greenhouse effect down here. More humidity, more snow, less melting, ... OR ... the obvious one, global WARMING --> MORE ice melting. It's critical to the models they are using to know which scenario applies. So they measure the radiation from Ice of different types and snow covers. It's amazing how little is known about the ice. It's hard, because it changes all the time. There are sattelite pictures, of course, but they can't see through clouds, and thay can't tell you the fine details either.
There's some amazing patterns you get in the ice. From swirls and vortices to waves (frozen and moving), pebble ice, Ice flowers, sheets of ice. It smashes into slivers. Or if it is thick enough, big chunks. If there's snow on top, it slows the ship down. More friction I guess. Some ships have water jets (?) that keep the hull wet. We don't. All icebreakers break ice by driving up onto it and the weight of the ship breaks the ice. Then you either keep moving or the ship has to stop and back up. If there's nowhere for the ice to move (solid ice all around, with no leads) it is much harder. Even 50cm thick ice can stop the ship. But in good conditions, and with both engines, 2-3m ice is no trouble. We broke through one small piece about 4 m thick.
The wind waves get dampened as soon as they hit the ice. Smoothed. Today the ice is so thin you can see them up to 20m in, but only rarely. The chop is prob not even 30cm, but it's hard to tell from up here. That's enough for now. I guess I'll wait for dinner, it's only an hour, then see if Dean wishes to continue these 'null' obs's. He doesn't seem too thrilled with the idea.
On other days, though, it's far too exciting and busy to write ...
Like when hundreds of thousands of prions passed the ship over a few
days, once we finally got into open water on the way home.
