Anyway, Once we put the high seas behind us it was smooth sailing for another 2 or 3 days before we got into the ice. Im not sure what I was expecting in terms of the first ice sightings, maybe a titanic sized berg floating by, accompanied by seals, penguins, albatross' and a killer whale or two...? Or a sheer wall of sea-ice confronting us like the front line of an army, which we had to ram, then ram again and again...? 
In any case, it started much less dramatically... a patch of pancake ice (pieces around 1-2m in diameter) floating past my bedroom window as I woke up, then practically nothing till lunch time. By mid-afternoon though we were steaming through thick pancake ice, which was increasing hourly into small floes.
The next morning it was basically 0.5 to a metre thick (or even more... its hard to tell sometimes), which is thick enough to drive a truck over. On the third day of our 'ice-land-ik' traverse we were starting to have trouble. The ship sometimes had to have 2 or 3 goes at ramming a particularly stubborn section of ice and we had to really start picking our path to Casey. In the end we stopped a little less than 80 nautical miles from Casey, and commenced "flyoff" operations on the 30th of October.
Before this though, as we started entering the sea-ice, we were put through a certain "ceremony" of induction... Our 'crossing-the-line' (60 degrees south) ceremony was far from Golding-esk, but fairly stupid never-the-less. The worst thing is that I was later told that the certificate they gave me (picture on the right) is useless if I want to cross the equator by sea. In that case I would be put through a similar ritual. Oh well, at least some people liked it.
