Once the blades were on, we were scheduled to start ferrying passengers to Dumont D'Urville. Which would have been fine, except that my fuel control cable froze, and in trying to free it, the starter switch assembly fractured in the cold
We had a very capable engineer who managed to get the switch repaired, so we only lost an hour or two
Then the first flights over the coast and the ice. Stunning, it's just so vast that distances are difficult to judge; each of these icebergs is over 250 metres long
My first Antarctica landing, at Cap Prudhomme
The coastline in the background: the blues on the iceberg were just stunning
Many of the bergs in the ice had seal colonies around them, especially if there was a break into the water for them to get through
The horizon is well over 100km away in this: it's hard to take in at first!
Next to DDU is a glacier, this is over the head of the glacier looking to the north, and the bergs that have calved from it
and over the glacier, looking inland
More bergs stuck in the ice
With 165 degrees of magnetic variation, and so close to the magnetic South Pole, the compass just kept spinning most of the time. I was heading east when I took this
