Welcome to Day 27 of our Antarctic Christmas. When last I wrote, we had left Mawson where we had dropped off the expeditioners who had previously been stranded on Polar Bird, and we were on our way back to Prydz Bay near Davis Base to have another crack at getting her out of the ice where she has been stuck for nearly a month.
Prydz Bay (68.20 deg S, 74.40 deg E)
It is a couple of hours past midnight in the small hours of Saturday morning as I write this.
It has been a long day. It began hopefully, turned to optimism and exhilaration and, as I write this, has ended with tension and frustration. We are just two miles from Polar Bird, but still the ice, the snow and the weather continue to thwart us.
I had been up through much of the previous night writing a progress report on the Thala Valley waste management project for Sydney office. After that there was an hour long phone call to Australia which began at 7 am Sydney time, (0200 Aurora time). I think I finally made it to my bunk around 0600.
Two hours later, Voyage Leader Greg, is at my door with the message that we are ten miles from Polar Bird and the two Squirrels are about to take off for a short recon flight. Greg knows that I'm keen to get some aerial footage of the ice and of Aurora Australis. He says if I am quick, there is a spot on one of the helicopters.
I am quick!
In about a nanosecond I am wide awake and scrabbling for warm weather gear, cameras and film. I pull on Yann’s fur-lined Size 10 Sorrels, (my own having disappeared when I left them at the door of the Casey Shed) and before you can say "ice", I’m up four sets of ladders and on the helideck where I am kitted out with immersion suit and life jacket, followed by a short but thorough briefing on safety procedures.
For longer reccies such as this, the choppers always fly in tandem. Ricardo is flying Sierra Romeo Bravo with his two passengers, Chief Mate Scott and Voyage Leader Greg.
I am in Hotel Romeo Delta with pilot Kevin and ANARE expeditioner Zane.
We're off first. We do a couple of circuits of Aurora while waiting for Sierra Romeo Bravo to join us aloft and once she is airborne, we are on our way south toward the thick ice.
It is another spectacularly clear morning with bright sunshine and a light southerly blowing. Southerlies are good, they blow the ice away from the land. Aurora has been moving easily at 7 or 8 knots in light ice floes, with about 60 or 70% clear water. The plan is to fly toward the thick ice and Polar Bird and search for inlets and channels in the ice from where we can direct Aurora to get closer. From 2,000 feet, and with such a clear sky, we have an horizon of about 40 miles and can clearly see the Amery ice shelf and the distant hills.
The light ice soon gives way to the thicker porridge that we have become used to, but as we fly west along its edge, channels of water start to emerge. From above, the ice looks like something between crazy paving and broken bits of Plaster of Paris.
The original plan is to do a short reccie and report back with options, but as the channels and leads become more pronounced, it is decided that the two choppers will push on further to see how close to Polar Bird these leads extend.
After another 20 minutes or so, we see her directly ahead of us – a small orange dot on the horizon which grows larger as we get nearer. Tiny ice cracks turn into longer channels and leads of clear water and, as we get even closer, we see that Polar Bird is in the centre of a rectangular pattern of channels, each one about a mile or so away from her.
There is the faintest suggestion of a diagonal crack which appears to run right through Polar Bird’s escape route and which may lead her to a possible way out. Even as I am watching and filming, the crack opens wider.
I am so intent on filming everything that's going on, that I almost forget to take in the magnificence of the scenery surrounding me. It is breathtaking.
We land one after the other on Polar Bird’s helideck, forward of the bridge and accommodation. She is a Norwegian vessel, registered in Bergen, smaller than Aurora Australis, but because she is a more conventional type of vessel than Aurora, she has quite a bit more cargo space.
We head on up to her bridge where we meet her Norwegian skipper and her voyage leader, Joe Johnson. By this time, the crack in the ice had opened sufficiently for Polar Bird to attempt to push forward a little, and very soon to cheers which ring out from all parts of the ship, she moves under her own steam for the first time in over four weeks. With ironic humour, typical of the hardy souls who venture down here, one stranded expeditioner, who has been stuck on board for the past month, calls out from the bridge where she is standing,
“I’m feeling seasick!”
We all know that this is only the start. She has 30 miles of thick ice to try to navigate before she finds more easily negotiated waters and although we spot plenty of leads, there is still a lot of crud to get through and she won’t be able to do it herself. There is also continuing concern about the weather. A change in wind or a drop in the barometer and it will all close in again, and if the streaks appearing in the sky away to our north are not enough of a sign of more severe weather on its way, the meteorological update from Davis Station confirms that our window of opportunity is shrinking.
Satisfied that Polar Bird is underway and making some progress north through the ice, we head back to Aurora, arriving some 45 minutes later – a breath-taking trip, one I will not forget in a long time.
All through the rest of the afternoon and early evening Aurora makes progress through the ice. A buzz goes through the whole ship when around 2100, Polar Bird comes into view for the first time and is clearly visible from our ship's bridge. She is about twelve miles away and slowly getting closer. She appears to have found a small billabong of clear water and is waiting for us to open a route for her. Spirits are high and we are all feeling that success is only a few hours away. Skipper Tony Hansen is aloft in Sierra Romeo Bravo with Ricardo and is giving running directions to Scott at the helm of Aurora. But the weather is deteriorating, and the wind has come around to the north, which is the very thing we do not need.
Soon the leads have all petered out and we are back in the thick crap which so frustrated everyone the last time we were here. But back then we were over 35 miles away; now we are only two miles from success.
Concentration and focus on the job in hand are paramount. By midnight, all non-operational personnel are asked to leave the bridge to the professionals and we let them get on with their mission unhindered.
As I write, it’s 0230 Saturday morning and the northerly wind is closing all the exits. The worst possible scenario is now a plausible reality.
Are we going to get stuck ourselves?
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