To everyone's surprise, it was and still is extremely stormy today. The weather forecast said 25 C and sunny!! It was in fact raining with ice pellets, cloudy and 30 knots of wind gusting to 40+ knots. The ship was rocking back and forth like a leaf! Many people felt dizzy. All the rosette work was cancelled. When lowering a mooring, one of the shackles broke, losing part of the mooring to the bottom of the ocean. Luckily, this part was replaceable. There is a strong low pressure over the Beaufort Sea area as INCATPA team member, meteorologist Jianmin Ma, indicated in his comments on the blog earlier. We may need to move further back into the gulf but the Amundsen’s hydraulics system for steering was out of order. It will take up to 48 hours to fix. Let’s hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
Reply to Russel’s comment: No ice in sight for a long time. There was some floating ice close to Sachs Harbour where we have several polar bear sightings. Else, it has been pretty much open sea.
Lowering equipment on the port side of the front deck in the storm