Last Ice: From the North Ross Sea to the Southern Ocean

Monday, 2 February 2015
At Sea — Southern Ocean
Current Position: 69°10’ S / 172°01’ E
Temps: 36F (2C) @ 7:30a (UTC +12)
Distance Since Ushuaia: 4,749 NM (5,465 miles / 8,795 km)

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
John F Kennedy

The party must have raged late into the night … there was no wake up call this morning.  Or Don, just didn’t set his alarm ;-)

Today was our day to go through the last bit of the bridge team’s nemesis — sea ice.  The ice charts have been notoriously unreliable on this trip.  We found ice where there was supposed to be none.  We found open — or relatively open — water where there was supposed to be heavy ice.

The helicopter crew takes advantage of a day at sea to do maintenance on the choppers.

Taking into account the time and distance calculations, Ortelius began heading north from Cape Adare yesterday.  It’s true that we’ve been on a more or less northerly course since reaching our southernmost point at Bay of Whales, but now it’s different.  Now we’re on the last leg of the voyage and the course is set for New Zealand by way of Campbell Island — weather permitting.

Expedition Day 25 sees us leaving the Great White Continent behind.

We woke up to a beautiful calm day amidst the ice.  It turned out that the sea ice was loose and in manageable chunks, and Ortelius made good time much of the day.  Around 1:30p, we thought we were out of the drift fields, but then band after band of light ice kept popping up throughout the afternoon.

Finally, around 5:00p, I photographed the last of the ice in our vicinity.  That we were in the clear was evidenced by Chief Mate Yury’s order to set course and engage the auto-pilot.  It had taken us half the projected time to get through the ice.

Bye Bye Ice!

We altered from the set course to get out of the ice.  Once we join up with
the “red line” there won’t be much wiggling since we are now out of the ice.

Our day included the second part of Victoria’s lecture on Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross Expedition.  She would have completed the lecture before our landing at Cape Adare yesterday, but the decision was made to postpone it after Mui’s little conversation with Don that we would prefer to be on the outer decks to enjoy all the ice around us on the approach to Cape Adare ;-).

Words written by Bernacchi after Hanson, a fellow member of the Southern
Cross Expedition, died in 1899 of an intestinal disorder.  At Hanson’s request,
he was buried at Cape Adare — the first person to be buried on the continent.

Recap was held before dinner.  Dmitri led off with a mini-lecture about skuas, which he described as “our least favorite bird” … because of their propensity to steal penguin chicks from colonies.  Jim followed to reveal that the “funny metal thing” at Borchgrevink’s Hut was a knife cleaner/sharpener — left behind by a later expedition that used the hut.  No one guessed the answer to this quiz topic right.

That “funny round thing” at the hut looked like a lot of things to us,
but not a knife cleaner/sharpener.  Of course, we didn’t get down on
the floor to find the label that’s apparently still on the thing.

Rolf picked up the microphone next to tell us that he was leaving copies of two reports in the bar for us to read at our leisure — considered controversial in one instance, and unsuitable for publication in the second instance.  The first one deals with the topic of whether Scott and his polar party could have been saved.  I read it after dinner … it brings up some interesting points to ponder.  I can’t access it online, but this December 2012 article in The Telegraph discusses the report.

The second report is about the “sexual proclivities” of Adélie penguins … hence why it was considered indecent for publication at the time Dr Murray Levick of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition (Northern Party) observed these habits and made note of them (1911-1912).  Again, I’m not able to access the report online, but this June 2012 article in The Guardian discusses the salient points.

Crabeater seals lazing about; with a pair of Adélies seemingly in deep discussion.
Could it be that they are discussing Levick’s finally published observations?

Don wrapped up the recap saying that the Bridge Team is relieved to be out of the ice.  We have over 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles/1,852 km) of open water to cross to our next destination in New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands.  He said he wasn’t going to talk about the weather forecast, noting however that “we may well need every minute of our time as we travel north.”  That’s code for potentially big storms are ahead of us.  He ended with a warning for us to treat our possessions with care now that we are in the Southern Ocean — including heeding the old axiom of “one hand to the ship, one hand to yourself.”

We have indeed noticed that gone are the calm seas that were moderated by the ice.  The Southern Ocean is throwing some swells at us, but it’s not bad — at least not yet.  That said, we’ll be rocked to sleep tonight.

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