Landscape

Just some landscape shots while working during refuelling between 12 midnight and 4am in the morning.

Resupply

Unloading

 A veiw of the Aurora will on fuel line watch at about 2am in the morning,

 Clocking on at 4am in the morning dureing refuelling to discover the booster pump pipework had failed and split  due to a blockage caused by ice in the pipeline. The pump was shut down and fuel contained in the tray of the pump houseing. We by- passed the pump and let the main pumps on the boat do all the work to get the job done.

A nother shot of the ship

Arriving at Davis

The telephone booth on the ship a bit like the Gym.

A view from the rear of the ship as we pulled up. The open water stayed like that due to the turbulence of the  propellers which where continually keeping the ship's pressure up against the sea ice.

The ladder down to freedom at long last.

Really happy to get of the boat to be able stretch those legs and burn some energy.

Walking some 2km to Davis station.

Nearing Our Destination

 Penguins in the middle of nowhere skating across a thin sheet of ice.

 Typical of the many hundreds of icebergs sighted.

 A crab eating seal that had  blood on on the side of his mouth from a earlier encounter.

Part of a very large Iceberg.

Getting colder

 The going started to get a bit tough as the ice sheets become thicker and more dense. It had also been snowing which addesd additional friction to the hull resulting having to back up then charge foreward to gain ground. The main engine had a slight leak in the cooling system and with the additional load made  it worst which meant shutting down the engine pulling of the head to repair the leak.We where stopped for the best part of 10 hours.

That worked at well as it was time to have a barby on the back of the trawl deck.

Have my Go-Pro camera on my head have tacken a lot of footage to large of a file to be able to post. In the foreground you can see a other vessel. This is pretty rare down in this part of the ocean as the area is so vast with very little traffic. I wonder why?

This is the ship owned by the Russians and taking supplies and a crew of Indians to there base a little futher south of Davis. A nice hot bowl of there curry would go down well right now.

Smooth sailing cruising at 13 knot's.

A bit of rough weather that made sleeping difficult as there where no seat belts in the beds. This was about 2am in the morning with water and waves crashing over the trawl deck

Cruising through some pancake ice.

Definitely heading in the right direction even the chains on this hand rail have been frozen in time.

Leaving Hobart

Loading up the Aurora with our supplies including 850,000 thousand litres of fuel and 600 tons of material, machinery and food. Notice the trawl deck on the back of the ship that will have some relevance in my next posting

 A view leaving port of the  "Ocean Protector" one of the Australian border protection vessels used by customs.

 A other ship taking half of Tasmania's forest overseas

First glimpse of wildlife a humpback whale that was part of a pod. They where breaching but i come in on the tail end of the action and only managed to get this shot before they all disappeared,

Out and about Tassie

 Sharon and myself at the lookout of Mount Wellington in Hobart nearly getting blown away. It was really cold nearly snowing and blowing nearly fast enough to take off. The clouds come and went giving us great veiws of Hobart and it's surrounds.

 We liked this sailing boat think it may have planted a seed for some adventure ahead together.

Down at Constitution Dock so many different styles of boats with a great atmosphere and feel for the ocean. Went and had dinner in the Drucken Admiral which had lot's of characture. We feasted on a seafood platter for two a few drinks then a nice walk into the evening checking out the boats. Sensational

In and around Tassie

 Hi every one heading back south to Antatica this time to Davis station till the middle of April. So off i go on an other adventure. Did not have to do that much training this time with the only course being a dog-mans ticket for safe slinging of loads that went for 4 days. The picture above is after i received a needle for the flue from the doctor at Kingston in Tassie who then let me give her baby a cuddle. Very cute.

 Sharon my girlfreind come down and spent the weekend with me before leaving. We had packed a lot in including a day tour to Bruni Island just south of Hobart.The day started with a cruise down the Derwent river to the island, a bus tour over the island, boating along the coast line and sampling some of the local produce.

 A good reason to eat oysters

 

This is the outlook from where we had lunch at the Fudge factory. We sampled all local produce including oysters, smoked atlantic samon, cheese, red wine and fudge. Could do with out the fudge but the rest was really nice. The island also has a large sheep farm that has about 10,000 head and is run by the Aborgines. Lot's of history from there time and the early settlers in particular the whalers.

Was a great day.