Ice!!

Yesterday was a day filled with very turbulent waters, crew said it was force 9!!!! :O No wonder people were progressively dropping like flies(me included). When the ships motion is so bad the tiredness and fatigue really set in, that coupled with the fact that the further south we go the drier it gets and so we have to keep topping the fluids up.

Had a brew with Ray, one of the cooks, at about 05.30 this morning and then Bang!!06:00 we hit the first bank of sea ice!! wow what an unbelievable experience, totally breathtaking.

Saw some pretty awesome sized bergs yesterday but nothing of any size today. The bands of ice have ranged from 20-30 metres wide up to in excess of 6-700 metres... the crunch and jolting of the ship and the scraping of the ice along the hull is unreal!!! some of the ice is 3-4 metres thick and then some... like a knife through (frozen) butter;) and we're still averaging 11knts on impact!! Can't wait for the thick stuff when we'll need to back up and take a couple of runs!!!

I'm sitting here and being thrown around by the impact as i type and the noise is amazing, sleep should be interesting tonight.

I have stopped taking the sea sick tabs today as the sea is a veritable mill pond:))) looking forward to a couple of beers tonight:)

Thats about the lot for today....did i mention the sunburn??? Day one left capetown, out on deck for 5 hours or so, yeah you know it!! no suncream:(( last few days i could have had a leading role in the singing detective!!! Better now, and yes i've learnt my lesson the hard way...