Overnight we cleared the ice around 02:00 to 03:00. Then we ran into a storm with a strong northerly wind and the ship started to pitch about again. Not as badly as in the storm on the way down, but bad enough.
As a result of the weather, neither of us slept well and we spent most of the day napping. Gerrit and I helped Simon with his lecture on aurora this afternoon. I think he appreciated the help of two physicists in explaining the scientific phenomena.
As we headed north so the days were rather lazy with not much to do. On 27 December Fred gave a talk 'Land of the Kings' - in this case the kings were King Penguins on South Georgia. He showed some beautiful slides. We began to hope we would get a chance to go ashore somewhere soon so as to take some good pictures too.
As we sailed further north the weather gradually improved and we were able to go up on deck and do some bird watching. Finally we had a smooth(ish) ride to Macquarie Island. By 21:00 on 28 December we were just 16 miles away. We started to see lots of penguins in the water but it was very difficult to identify many. We could only be sure of one Royal and a couple of Kings.
Since we had not been able to get through the ice and into the Ross Sea, we had a few days in hand, with no particular schedule. Rodney decided he would try to contact DOC in New Zealand and obtain permission for us to pay a visit to Campbell Island. He managed to get through and obtain the necessary permits even though it was still the Christmas holidays. Thus we were fortunate to be able to add Campbell Island to our itinerary.
