The 85th parallel was broken by Penguin Bravo yesterday and another seven miles put under the belt today. The position as of this evening is 85deg08minN 74deg19minW. This is the good news the bad news is that the team is tonight camped right up alongside a large lead with no obvious crossing point.

For those of you that have been following the progress on this web page this news will be familiar. The movements, closures and refreezing of leads is as much an art as it is a science and no one can predict whether the situation will be more or less optimistic tomorrow morning, such is the diversity of factors that effect the formation and closure of the leads. We just cross our fingers and hope.

Some of you will have noticed that the progress of the expedition is on average accelerating week by week. This is no great surprise and is basically in line with the target. We have averaged 5 miles per day so far and need to average 6 from now on if we are to make it to the Pole by the end of May. The pressure ridges experienced in the early stages are becoming less prevalent and up until tonight the expedition has not come across any significant leads for almost two weeks. The danger is of course that as the temperatures climb and the sun becomes higher in the sky, the expedition will come across more and more leads. In short we have to make excellent progress whilst the going is good.

The changeover between Bravo and Charlie has now been put back one day to Friday owing to some technical difficulties we in Resolute are trying to solve on the ski bindings for Charlie having had feed back from Bravo on the ice.

One hundred and twenty three miles gone, two hundred and ninety four to go.