Days 195-197

 Well we are back in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately we will be in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ or doldrums) for a few days.

The ITCZ is the area on the globe where the winds from the two hemispheres converge, lots of cloud, torrential rain, thunderstorms and clouds.

The top pic is a screen shot from the x-band radar just as we crossed the line, the yellow clutter on the screen is rain passing through. The blue is a trails feature, showing where the rain was.

The second pic is the current view from my porthole, a wee bit different from a few days ago!

days 189-194

We are making good progress northward. Pos 15° S  035° W, back in the northern hemisphere in a few days. 

The sea state has been slight with a long swell, giving the ship a slight roll. There have been a few big showers but it is hot, night and day. Sea temp is 28°C, air in the day is +30°C and at night it is 28°. This ship being an ice class vessel, the air con system isn’t that great but the odd cold beer helps.

Days 184-188

 We set sail as planned on Saturday evening and turned to start heading towards the UK.

The weather has been settled, with a low swell and slight sea. I’ve been kept busy with astro nav and learning COLREGs.

Current location is 40° S 50° W, approximately 400miles off the coast of Argentina, in the next 5000 miles we only have to alter course twice!

 It has been a busy couple of weeks; we have finished our charter work and loaded the ship to head back to the UK.  We received a tsunami warning whilst North of the Falklands, fortunately the ship was in deep enough water not to notice anything.

The ship is completely full, we are carrying a lot of recycling waste, cranes, skidoos, boats as well as ice core samples, rock samples and an aquarium full of live samples. Pics to follow.

The ship sails on Saturday afternoon; the passage is scheduled to take 30 days. Roll on the heat of the tropics!

Days 165-167

Heading north from Rothera, back up through Lemaire channel and Neumayer, ETA Stanley Tuesday night. Then on Sunday night we learn from HMS Protector there is a Brazilian navy ice ship stuck in the ice, 70miles from our location. We altered course and started to make our way towards the vessel. Conditions were not particularly great, F9 on the starboard bow causing a lot of sea spray that froze in mid air before accumulating on the bridge windows and f’c’sle.  Having reached her on Sunday night we escorted her back through the ice and into open water, now we are back on track to Stanley ETA Thursday morning.

Days 160-164

We arrived at Rothera and discharged some cargo before slow steaming over night to Stonnington base. The wind was fairly strong, F7/8 then as we got closer to land it began to pick up to a steady F12 (max of 80kts). This was mostly katabatic winds (cold air mass coming off the mountains) and as a result it was too rough to launch the RIBs, back to Rothera.

We finished discharging at Rothera and some of us were taken down a crevass (see pics)

The ship left Rothera on Friday morning and headed back to Stonnington and Horseshoe. We went there to undertake a health and safety assessment of the old bases. The base at Horseshoe is 1950s and it has been left exactly as it was then.

  View of Rothera and surroundings

  

  Crevass

  

  natural light (7m below surface)

  The Shack @ Horseshoe

  Dog kennel @ Horseshoe

  Cabin

  Tins of food

  Shelves in kitchen

Days 155-159

The trip across Drakes passage wasn’t too bad after all, we had some wind force 11 but it only lasted a day or so. Te trip down the peninsula has been as amazing as always, lots of whales doing aerials and showing their tails.

We took a trip into the Ukranian base called Vernadsky to remove some waste and to the museum base of Wordie to do the same, we are currently making our way down to Rothera in big seas and thick snow.

 Mountains

  

  Vernadsky base

  Vaernadsky bar

  100ft yacht

  Wordie galley

  Wordie base