Ronne Continued

We are still alongside at Ronne, the cargo is nearly completed. The weather over the last few days is a good example of typical weather down here, the sun has been out resulting in a plummeting ground temperature (-26°C), then came clouds and snow and warm conditions (-2°C).

One of the pictures is of the 'sunset'. The sun doesn't actually set down here at this time of the year but that is as low as it got that night.

 With the cold snap we've had, the sea has frozen in around the ship

The flexible fuel bladders for the land train

Alongside at Ronne

The ship has arrived! Current position 76° 46' S 052° 21' W.

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).

 B14-Largest iceberg in the world with the sea beginning to refreeze

Twin Otter landing on the Ronne shelf

Alongside at Halley

The ship is now moored alongside at N9, this is a low piece of shelf that we moor alongside if we have particularly heavy cargoes to discharge or load. This call the heavy cargo is fuel, 50 tonnes of it.

When the ship is tied up to the ice, it is strictly still at sea so the the bridge has to be manned as such i.e. with qualified deck officer. For the next three weeks, all the deck officers are on 12 hour watches because we will be encountering heavy ice and this allows two officers on the bridge at any one time. Tonight it is me on the bridge alone, checking the moorings, looking out for rogue bergs that may float towards the vessel and maintaining the thrusters (we use the thrusters here continuously to keep the ship alongside.

Weather conditions tonight- ground temp -12°C Force 4 offshore wind.

We will be leaving N9 in the next couple of days and heading towards the Ronne Ice shelf, although there is almost 300miles of thick ice so we still don't know if it will be possible to get there. The purpose of it is to meet up with three warm water drill teams and give them more supplies, part of one of the teams is actually the iStar project which I was involved in two years ago. The hot water drilling is part of a number of science projects, mainly drilling into subglacial lakes.

Ice breaking and transhipping

The past few days have been busy. We finally encountered some ice on our way to the German Neumayer station. There we met up with the South African research vessel. Some vehicles were transferred between the two vessels and the shore. Then on our way to Halley.

During our stop at Neumayer, we did some maintenance on one of the ship's gyro compass'. See pics

Two tabby bergs

Multi year open pack

SA ship

Multi year pack- noisey going!

Inside this magic ball is two gyros set at 90° to each other, as these are spun up it maintains a constant direction with the ship moving around it.

Inside the magic ball

This is the casing that the gyro ball sits in, it is filled with a special electrically conductive liquid, so the ball is free to move and current can also pass through it to keep the gyros spinning

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.