The ice images from after we arrived here at N9 shows that our route would have been cut off by high concentrations of ice if we had have delayed setting sail from Ronne by 24 hours, it is very likely that we would have been trapped for weeks if not longer. It just goes to show that you can't hang around here too long before it all starts to close in again.
This is sea ice concentration, dark purple 100% coverage- blue 0%. Grey is 'land'. The red line shows our actual course taken, the waypoints were the planned track. From these types of images you cannot tell the thickness of the ice, only coverage. Some of the purple is new ice which is easy for us to go through. The difficulty arises when there is thick ice with no pools of open water between floes, as the ship cannot break through it as the ice has nowhere to go, the pressure of the ice on the ships hull causes us to get stuck and become part of the ice, drifting with it until it lets us go.
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