Dec. 21 Mrs. Chippy Pressing for McMurdo amidst the Bergs

    Ten days into our expedition, and just another 1000 nautical miles to go! From our position in the Amundsen Sea – we literally are running in the middle of icebergs several times larger than the Oden. They are truly spectacular to see – each having their own unique character. Here is one of my favorites from this morning which was rose about 200 feet above the sea, twice as high as the Oden .

    With visibility sometimes dropping to less than a kilometer due to fog and snow – we’re very thankful for the radar which lets us know exactly where they are at all times. In this picture every white "blip” on the blue radar circle is one iceberg, the circles represent 1 kilometer segments and the straight line is our current track.

    Imagine this giant iceberg simply emerging out of the fog – as this one did just five minutes ago. Of course the first mate had already adjusted our course to pass a safe 2 miles from it – but it had been directly in our track and without the radar we could have been on a direct collision course. The picture is deceiving – it is actually about 3 times as long as our ship and twice as high.

    So I asked the First Mate – Mattias Peterson – what danger there would be if we ran into one of these giant icebergs. Here he is on the bridge with technician Axel Meiton.

    He laughed and said that they had actually rammed one at full speed during the initial seatrials for the ship and that although it came to an immediate dead stop, there was absolutely no damage to the ship in any way. The Oden was designed specifically to be able to handle such a full speed collision. He said the only problem would be that everything loose would absolutely go flying and people would likely be hurt bouncing around the cabins – but the ship would be fine. Even the dual 5 meter diameter propellers are protected by a housing which if capable of supporting the full weight of the ship without any damage – incredible! This is a shot of a photo on the wall in the engine room giving a sense of the size of the props and the housing.

    Here is also our current and planned track on the gps system. We will continue to head due west at 270 degrees for about another 24 hours, then cut southwest to enter the Ross Sea heading right for my paw which is pointing to Ross Island and McMurdo Station.

    Here is our current position information for those who are tracking us:

    Latitude: 67 degrees 43 minutes south

    Longitude: 124 degrees 21 minutes west

    Air temp: -1 degree celcius

    Water temp: -.6 degrees celcius

    Wind speed: 15 meters per second or 32 miles per hour

    No sunrise or sunset – just 24 hours of daylight

    The big excitement of the day was a bunch of early morning phone calls to classrooms and home – the iridium satellite phone can be a bit glitchy picking up interference from all the metal of the ship, so we’ve found the best place to talk is from the roof of the bridge. This is no problem for a tough, thick furred polar bear like myself – but as you can see Mr. Miller requires a little bit of extra clothing to keep himself warm in the below 0 temps and 30 mph winds.

    The new time zones also make calling the US interesting – to connect with the Redd School in Houston Texas at 10 AM Thursday – meant calling from the Oden at 5 AM Friday. Made for a really good excuse for a mid-morning nap on the bridge.

    Well thanks to everyone who took part in our second PolarTREC webinar – it was great to be able to share some live question and answer time with students from all over the country. We look forward to sharing even more of our adventure with you over the next few days as we head into the heavy ice and thick animal population of the Ross Sea and Ice Shelf.

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