After a couple of days of fairly bumpy seas, we hit the colder Antarctic ocean currents, and ice started to appear. At first, just little pieces, but then increasingly larger icebergs appeared.
Icebergs are made of fresh water carved from glaciers, and can float around in the ocean for several years. In the winter, the surface of the sea itself freezes, locking these big bergs into the sea ice, until it melts the following spring.
Signy lies just at the outer edge of the northern limit of the Antarctic sea ice, so it, and everything south of it, is linked to the frozen Antarctic continent during the deepest of winter months when the sea ice extent is at its greatest. In the summer the sea ice melts and Signy is surrounded by open water.
As the research station is uninhabited during the winter, upon arrival at Signy in the Spring, we have no idea whether it will be still locked into the sea ice, or have open water. This year we reached the edge of the sea ice only a few miles from Signy.
The ice was breaking up, but still very densely packed in a lot of places, making progress exceedingly slow as the ship picks its way carefully through. One day we covered only 4 miles.
At the back of the ship the ice quickly closes back in after passing through it, leaving a very real sense of being in the middle of nowhere.
At night the ship continues, with the aid of bright navigational lights.
After two days of ice, we finally reached Signy, which conveniently had a small area of open water around it, allowing us to access the research station by launching the small boats. Upon arrival, our task was to get the research station up and running and ready for the coming science season.
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