Dec. 23 – Home at last!!
No – not me and not Mrs. Chippy – this homecoming is for the Oden! 11,000 nautical miles have passed since she left Gotteberg, Sweden on November 3 – and for these past 50 days she has been out of her element – nothing on this voyage has born even a slight resemblance to her home in the Arctic as seen in this photo of her last year.
For weeks on end the Oden has seen nothing except the open ocean between the Baltic Sea and the South Pacific, crossing the equator her engine crew sweltered below decks as the temps reached 130 degrees in the engine room. This ship is designed for breaking ice, not for the open seas and swells of the Drake PassageStrait, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Tierra del Fuego and the South Shetland Islands. Located about 100 mi (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsula, it is 600 mi (1,000 km) wide. – but despite that she has been a trustworthy friend as we have pressed on our quest for Antarctica. And today as we headed south into the Ross Sea, the Oden was back in her element. Here is our current position information:
Latitude: 68 degrees 48 minutes south
Longitude: 144 degrees 23 minutes west
Air temperature: -2.2 degrees celcius
Sea temperature: -1.6 degrees celcius
Wind speed: 12 meters per second
No sunrise or sunset – just 24 hours of daylight
You could almost here an audible sigh as she heaved her 13000 tons onto the pack to crush it into submission. Here her bow rides onto the first solid ice we encountered.
Here the broken ice glides by her starboard side – pushed aside to leave an open passage behind.
This is a very different environment than the Arctic – as these huge icebergs do represent a barrier that could stop the ship cold.
They tower over the bow of the ship as we often pass within a few 100 meters of their bulk.
We’ve also gotten back into an area where we are seeing more animals – and just passed by a crabeater seal enjoying some solitude on a large piece of sea ice. Sure didn’t seem to mind an eight story icebreaker splitting his floe in two.
Here are some Adelie penguins that floated by enjoying some time on an ice floe:
And here is a Ross seal off in the distance – having some solitary time on the sea ice.
So I guess that was our Christmas present to our host – a return to the ice. From here forward it will be only the mass of the Oden that will help us press through the increasingly thick sea ice that stands between us and McMurdo Station. Seeing her pass through several meters of ice like a hot knife through butter makes those rolling days in the swell much easier to appreciate!
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