Waiting by the Vilkitsky strait in the South Kara Sea 2nd August.
Last night was slightly more windy in our Cove. My anchor watch was pretty boring, and was well pleased to creep into my sleeping bag. At 4am Constance woke me, bits of floating ice all around. I thought she was pissed, so got up in my boxers. She was right, with the change of direction of wind, we had lots of bits of loose ice all around the boat, and worryingly, congregating around the anchor chain. Next up was Dennis in his Orange Y fronts. So this American lady had a Brit in blue Boxers and a Russian running around the boat. NO white cotton fronts here. – In more senses than you might think !
A big day in Russia today; Paratrooper day, so Vodka comes out for our Comrades. Also, this is a unique day for the boat. We left Bristol today a year ago for our shake down cruise. Same track up to Tromso, then unto Spitsbergen. That was a great trip. That was probably one of my smarter decisions. We are by far better prepared than last year for this trip. Probably a hundred different changes, from new IT, Radar, to more Mr Trotters and Mamont.
So we have waited all day for our Ice charts. Sat photos in from friends around the World. Well the latest as you can see, massive changes in just a few days. We could probably get to the tip of the straight, but our charts then show solid ice. It would probably take us a day, as some of it would be through 4 to 6/10 ice. Some ice free.
But the forecast is the wind changing direction tonight, it would drive the pack onto us slowly going up the coast, with Zero shelter.
The Laptev Sea as you can see has also changed after a few days, which is very encouraging, but there are still areas where the pack is up against the shore, with No route through. BUT just really small sections. A few miles which is so frustrating. It doesn’t matter if its a 100 miles or 100 yards, if you have solid pack and you can’t move, thats it. Your stuck.
OOOOOH ARRRGGHHH. I hate indecision. I have talked for hours with Nikolai. I certainly feel more positive, but never make the mistake of ‘buying a dog and then doing the barking’ !!!! I listen to Nikolay. We do have time on our hands.And it’s better to be safe than sorry. So we are not leaving this anchorage just yet
David
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I am curious as to whether the air felt colder when the ice moved in. Did the water temperature drop? Post pictures if you can. I am following you with great interest, as an amateur scientist. Happy paratrooper’s day!
We will post pictures soon, getting images off the boat takes a lot of time and bandwidth and interrupts other comms ie to get icecharts etc. So we can normally get a few off a day and maybe a very short vid. We got a drone vid today shhhh don’t tell anyone. But the real challenge will be compressing it enough to get it off the boat!
It did feel colder but that might have been to do with the wind change we cant be sure. And the fact that we were running around in our underwear in the ‘night’ to push it away. Seriously though yes of course it has some effect. I’m sure we will feel it more and we will report on this phenomenon better when we are sailing closer to the ice edge.