Antarctic Sandwiches

The fine weather is still holding. We are on our way to Neumayer (the main German base). We took a quick stop onto South Thule island which is the southern most South Sandwich island, it forms half of an inactive volcanic crator. There is the ruins of an Argentinian base, when the Falklands war started, the British government evacuated the base then blew it up as the South Sandwich islands are also British territory. Today South Thule is covered in penguins, elephant and fur seals. We also did some mapping of the sea floor to send to the Hydrographic office so they can update the charts of the area.

Bergy bit with Iceberg in background

Iceberg

South Thule Island

South Thule

Daylight over the horizon

Tabular berg

Bird, Growler and Iceberg

On Monday we passed the 60°S latitude, that is the Antarctic treaty limit and the official line of where Antarctica starts. There is an abundance of whales and birds also lots of icebergs, bergy bits and growlers which keep us busy on the bridge.

 Cargo Tender (Tula)

 One of the ships Humbers

Bird Island was a success. The mornings weather was exceptionally good and when I went to take photos in the afternoon, the snow and clouds came in.

Rolling and Pitching Easily

The ship is arriving saturday morning at Bird Island. We are going there to delivery cargo and personnel as well as taking out waste. This will be done via the ships small inflatable boats and cargo tender (Tula). The island itself does not provide much shelter from the weather but thankfully the conditions are forecasted to be ideal (we are currently in between two low pressure systems). Another difficulty with Bird Island is the abundance of kelp which grows in the channel, this is causes minor difficulty for small inflatables as they are outboard motor propelled but for the larger cargo tender (which is jet drive) the kelp can stop her in her tracks. To mitigate against this happening, the inflatables will clear a path in the kelp using their propellers.

We had an oil prevention drill this morning, this is a mandatory requirement for all vessels who will go south of 60° and were also carrying extra oil prevention equipment for the Ronne shelf Expedition so it gave everybody a chance to become familiar with this kit.

These are a couple of photos of the sunset last night and a picture of the ECDIS (Electionic Chart and Display Information System). It shows  that the electronic world of navigation hasnt quite reached this far yet as the blue bits are places where there are no electronic charts available, thats why on this ship we still navigate with paper charts, having the electronic only as back up

Underway and Making way

The ship is now full of fuel and heading towards Bird Island (A small island SE of South Georgia). We are planning to arrive there by saturday morning, cargo will be done via the small boats that the ship carries.
   Once we leave Bird Island, its a 5 day steam to the Weddel Sea to meet up with the South African research ship, Ahgullus II. We are doing a transhipment of vehicles with her, then onward to Halley.

Same Ship, different job

Hello everyone. I am back on the Ernest Shackleton but now I am a qualified officer. I am sailing as third officer.

I flew to the Falklands to join the vessel from Brize Norton UK. The flight was via Ascension and in total took 19 hours. I joined the ship on Saturday morning and we have been doing cargo work, next stop is another harbour in the Falklands to get fuel then down to Bird Island and South Georgia at the end of the week.

This Trip will be an interesting one as we are putting in a science experiment on the Ronne Ice Shelf which is located at the bottom of the Weddel Sea (as far south as you can get on a ship). More of that later.

 Stop Off at Ascension

 Ascension Island

 Eurofighters came to play on approach to Falklands

 A non typical summers day in Falklands