Some creepy old dude sent me an email. He's on a ship ploughing through pack ice on his way to shift some cargo once he gets the whirly birds out of the hold and find some lost GPS markers buried under snow and ice ... apparently it has been really tough with the ship rolling around tons, but he's looking forward to having scotch with 40,000 yearold ice cubes on the way home ...

I'm sure his photos will suck ...

um....you need to explain some more???? Do you know this person??

Tell us the whole story.

Oh wait.....are you talking about Heli??? Doh...

trappers - tell the old bastard that I decided to go on the ride last Saturday any way. Had a TOP day, great roads, great weather and he's on a boat in that Antarctic. He definitely missed out !

Is he going to just pop out side and be some time?

Old sea dogs never retire from the sea... you should see some of his olden day phots from UK times.... talk bout tough.

Why would you go to the Antarctic?

Ian D was silly enough.

There is nothing there!

one of the most fascinating places on the planet.

I would go

Once you get past the coastal strip it is a flat barren mass of ice with absolutely no life. The odd mountain top sticking out of the ice.

perfect for drilling for oil and as a nuclear rubbish dump

I can just see him in his bright yellow jacket, roaring across the wide open ice fields on the Beemer

i'd love to go to Antartica

why??
its full of oil wells and nuclear rubbish dumps

oh TC you are such a cynical old bugger.

It is on my to-do list as well, but I doubt if I could teach the penguins anything

Ok Heli justs sent me an update of his location ... I've marked it on GE

Click on the image for a larger version

Wow...good job traps.

Tell him from me unless the ship rolls through 50 degrees one way (100 degree total roll) he is totally soft. The AA (I am assuming he is on that) is rated to 55 degrees so 50 degrees is really nothing to worry about

10,000 year old glacier ice in scotch is magnificent, the air bubbles have been compressed that it crack and pops and fizzes in quite a unique way and of course the water is soo pure.

I would say hope he enjoys himself but that is such a stupid comment I wont bother.

He's just down past my place

He's on a sattalite link that only updates once an hour and has limited bandwidth (I assume) ... oh and his email address is a shipwide one, so if I send him an email, everyone reads it ... so I'm not going to call him soft via that! As Doonks said ...his background in the British navy will have prepared him at least in part for this I am sure

Only in part. There is a BIG difference between normal ships and ice breakers.

Normal ships have keels and fins and stabilizers to minimise roll. The problem with these is that they get caught in ice and rip holes in the hull. Hence ice breakers don't have any, they have round bottoms so that they don't catch ice in a roll and so that they can slide UP onto the ice if necessary (the AA actually uses that as part of its ice breaking process).

As such his RN ships wouldn't have rolled anything like and ice breaker. That is of course unless he is on a Japanese or US super nuclear powered one that is about the size of an aircraft carrier. They are just sailing cities.

You mean like this?

Oh what a lucky bugger!!!

Good luck to Heli though, you don't get opportunities like that without putting in all the hard work first

I am so incredibly envious

Undies - see no keel, no stabilizers etc. Its like a cork bobbing around.

I guess that one rolled a little too far

It sure would be one hell of an experience....and one you'd never forget.

Mind you I don't fancy myself staying alive too long if I was on that boat.

On the boat is OK, in the water is something else

Hope they had enough room in the life rafts! On the AA everyone could supposedly fit in the life rafts on either side of the boat.

ummm yeah....I meant in the water.....on the boat is good....in the water is bad....very very bad.

perhaps not quite that far