A very mixed day of ups and downs, probably better described as down, ups and down !

Anchored at Volodarskiy Island. N77 18 .062 E107 07 .574 8/8. raining. Getting darker each night water temp 1.27 outside temp 2

A very mixed day of ups and downs,  probably better described as down, ups and down !

First off, our make shift mooring next to a large pan of ice was surrounded by ice in all directions in the morning, Nikolai woke up Dennis and myself to do the grunt work.  It took a lot of grunting, swearing, pole dancing, backwards and forwards to get clear. It has to be said, My drinking Comrades did a great skilful job in getting clear.

So back to trying to get down the coast. None of it.  Back to the track of last night. Ros came into her own, and did a very skilful job on her watch, she managed to make great progress through 3/10th ice for 30 miles, and spirits were high that we might get to the coast, as the ice charts and Sat photo showed it was clear.

Well after a dinner of lentils, and boy do I hate lentils !, it was my watch. clear water, slowly made way for thicker and thicker ice. Backwards/forwards,Three different routes, lots of swearing, many conferences with Nikolai. Stuff it, We needed to anchor again, We had 6/10 ice, and if we ploughed on until the middle and got caught, we could be in trouble. Im already losing sleep, and don’t want to lose any more unnecessarily,

So tomorrow, another day, new Sat photo, leave the pioneering route finding to the ladies and maybe the coast and clear waters. Well thats the toast we did at midnight. Clear waters.