Gazing dreamily at the sea ice

Ice healing.  This is something new and very exciting!  It seems that the ship has more ways of breaking through ice than just a specially shaped hull.  When the ice gets very dense, as it was for much of the journey north from Rothera and all around Signy, there is some magic button that can be pressed to make the ship rock from side to side, breaking ice and helping with forward progress.  When that fails you can either reverse and try a different route or reverse and ram into the same bit of ice again in the hope that this time it will crack.  Hanging out in the cargo holds when this is going on is fairly exciting - bit like in Titanic when the water rushed in over the car that Kate and Leo had just been sitting in, drowning the two men in white uniforms who were chasing them (did that actually happen or did I imagine it?)  We have no cars in the holds, no one is wearing Victorian costumes and no water has been rushing in anywhere on the ship, but I do have a rather vivid imagination.

Tipping the ship from side to side to break the ice

I have been terribly unproductive over recent days and have spent much of my time sat in the surgery with the door open staring out at the ice (and the penguins and seals that inhabit it).  I blame the many late nights I spent enjoying the all night sun around Rothera and then a very late one on Christmas day - I'm clearly too old for those kind of antics.  However, it will soon be New Year and I will turn over a new leaf.  Maybe get on with a bit more laminating.  However, in more positive and very unexpected news, I have managed to go cold turkey on the jaffa cakes in an early attempt at a New Year's Resolution - 4 days and counting! 

The JCR as seen from Signy

Cargo tender at Signy on only the third sunny day they have had there since we left them some time ago!

Surprisingly we did actually make it in to Signy to drop off and pick up people.  Unfortunately, when we came back to refuel the base the next morning, an awful lot of ice had blown into the bay and it was impossible to get the cargo tender in.  I believe they have plenty of fuel for now and I suspect the other BAS ship (the Shackleton) will be given the task of refuelling when they call in next year.  It proved very, very tricky to capture just how incredible the expanse of sea ice really was, but I think the black and white pictures maybe do it more justice than the colour ones.  It was also interesting to see how the wildlife responded to a big red ship bearing down on them.  Some of the seals appeared to want to fight it, others were catatonic with fear, others rapidly (and rather ungracefully) lolopped into the sea and some just couldn't care less and carried on sunbathing.  The penguins either looked confused or bemused until they decided to dive for cover at the last minute.