Penguin Charlie are getting into their paces now. This evening after their fourth day on the ice they are at 85degs36minsN 73degs52minsW, having basically achieved an average of just over six nautical miles a day, not bad given the heavy sledges.

One of the issues for the ice team in recent days has been drift - namely the movement of the ice on which they are walking, the best comparison being a moving carpet. The ice team get a feel for this most acutely when they check their position every morning with the GPS and ascertain how much and in which direction they have drifted overnight. A drift of nearly a mile is not uncommon, when translated into mph over the 12 hours or so they are camped this is approximately 0.1mph. Not a whole lot it may seem but when the drift is southwards it is not something you want to learn of first thing in the morning when faced with another hard days slog north.

The drift most commonly experienced seems to have been to the East. This it seems is in common with the other expedtions out on the ice. All of them started out from Ward Hunt along the 75th longitude. They have now all shifted over to the east to the 72nd and 73rd degree of longitude. In fact the distance between the degrees of longitude at about the 85th/86th latitude is, while being significant, not that great i.e. about 4 miles. The problem for the teams on the ice is to decide whether to counter the Easterly drift by walking due north north west (say) everyday or whether to keep heading exactly due North every day in the belief that the consistent easterly drift of one week will be balanced out in future weeks by a consistent westerly drift.

In other parts of the Arctic Ocean there do appear to be consistent drifts of the ice brought on by known oceanic currents. With respect to the "track" leading from Ward Hunt up to the Pole there does not appear to be any consistent current over weeks. Indeed this is one of the reasons that expeditions leave from Ward Hunt Island rather than from points closer to the Pole such as the northern most tip of Greenland, where there are apparently some much stronger currents which can have some very significant adverse southerly direction in them.
If there is any one out there who can shed some greater light onto this debate then we would be pleased to hear from you.

So much for the technical stuff and back to softer issues more relevant to the MPPR; there was a rather moving meeting in the tiny Resolute airport building tonight between the outgoing Bravo team and the incoming Delta team. The former with a twinkle in their eye full of the "I've just done it" confidence and the latter with an excited but apprehensive look about them. The meeting rather stopped others in the airport in their tracks. Everyone basically just gawped at this rather striking band of women looking quite the part in their sponsor badged clothing, exchanging stories rapidly.

Penguin Delta comprising Andre Chadwick (sister of Steve, the creator of the web site), Juliette May, Sarah Jones and Rosie Clayton start their training tomorrow. Good luck to them.

151 miles gone, 264 to go.