Pancake Day

Hi Folks,

I have just learnt that I will be out of the satellite footprint for a while, which means that my umbilical link to the internet (and hence voice-over-IP telephone) will be broken. I should have some kind of temporary email address through a different system, which I will email a lucky subset of you from when/if I get it. Also, I will still be able to phone through Iridium, a commercial satellite system, but that costs a fortune and cannot be done from my cabin so it will be limited to neanderthal grunting at spouse only!

It will probably be a fortnight or so until I blog again. Until then, I thought I wold post some pics of the 'pancake ice' we have been swishing through all day. When a turbulent body of water is cooled to below its freezing point, tiny crystals of ice, called 'frazil' form. The frazil crystals stick together to form 'pancakes', which have raised edges because they bash together under the action of the waves:

Eventually, the pancakes stick together to form larger pancakes:

and so on until fully-fledged floes are formed.

Combine these things with the rest of nature and you start to go weak at the knees. Have a look, it's nice:

That's it for now. While away, I will probably look stupid most of the time. For example, photographing the sunrise at -20C makes me look like an evil goblin:

Au revoir.