The wind and sea currents hadn't changed and opened up any routes to allow us to head closer to the Snow Hill Island Emperor Penguin colony. So, we were still milling around the Northern Weddell Sea and Antarctic Sound area. On a positive note, Pippa gave us an early six AM wake up call to say that we had good weather and we would shortly be resuming flying. I was in the last group of passengers to fly and I headed off for an early breakfast, so I was ready for our call to prepare to fly about half eight.
Waiting to be call: Given we were flying in Antarctica, then we had to prepare for emergencies, so plenty of warm weather clothing, the insulated wellies and our life jackets. I was down to fly with Rob, my cabin mate and Andy (middle)
Take off: When I worked for Ferranti in the late 80s on Type 42 Destroyer software, one of my colleagues got to fly out to the ship he was joining. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to fly on or off any of the ships I worked on. Finally, I got to fly off & onto a ship
Not the usual view of Ortelius that I was used to
I'm doing my best Michelin Man impression
Andy seemed happy with our flight
We quickly moved away from the ship
Heading past one of the large icebergs
Flying past one of the large icebergs
There were some good-looking views of the large icebergs from the helicopter
We dropped in height around some of the large icebergs
Looking down on one of the gaps between the icebergs
Our pilot dropped in height to fly between these two large icebergs
My side of the iceberg as we flew between two large icebergs: I wouldn't want to get this close to an iceberg in a zodiac, in case a large lump dropped off it and created a sudden large wave
Each of the helicopters touched down in turn on one of the large icebergs
We headed back towards the ship after about twenty minutes
Lining up with the back of the ship
Touch down after a fun helicopter flight
After the flights had completed, we headed off towards Brown Bluff to see if it was possible to land at this nice Penguin colony, which I visited on my previous trip to Antarctica. Unfortunately, when we got closer, the Expedition team discovered there was too much sea ice to allow us to land there. This was a pity as the site is home to both a Gentoo Penguin and an Adelie Penguin colony. The ship switched to Plan B, which was to head back towards the Petrel base and lay on a zodiac cruise in the afternoon. This proved to be a good move as we had an exciting sighting along the way. I will cover that in the next Blog Post.
