It has been a heavy week of icebreaking. The ship has been stopped a few times by thick pack but we now have much higher resolution and more up to date ice images so it makes picking the right route much easier. The bottom of the Weddell Sea is the home to the megabergs of the world, we passed close to the biggest one in the world, its 70km long 65km wide and approx, 400m deep.
The ship is alongside a creek at the Ronne shelf, this means we are connected to the fast ice (old pack ice that is 'connected' to the shelf) and there is a snow ramp up onto the shelf itself. The next 5 or 6 days will be busy here, there is all the cargo to discharge onto the shelf as well as some 400 drums of fuel to depot on an island not far from here. This will be done by twin otter aircraft, the aircraft can take 7 drums at a time and its an hour flight time each way. There are two planes, pilots and groundcrew on the newly formed skiway (like a runway but on snow) ready to go. There are no co-pilots with the planes so co-pilots are being recruited and trained from the ships crew, we had some survival training in the even of the plane ditching and tomorrow we will have the plane familiarisation brief from the pilots.
The 5 or 6 days that the ship is down here, we have to be continually mapping the ice to the North of us to make sure we can actually get back out of the Weddell Sea! We are hoping for a good strong wind and the air temperature to increase. It has been a steady -15°C and has dropped to -18°C tonight. This has meant, the ice that we broke through to get here has already began to refreeze as well as the sea itself beginning to refreeze (much earlier than is normal).
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