Two days ago we left with you the thought that: "within three hours ....assuming a smooth changeover, Echo will be on the ice ........ and taking their first steps towards the Pole". Well if we didn't believe in "tempting fate" when we wrote that, we do now. You got it, the changeover was aborted at the last minute.

The first thing to say is that Penguin Delta are all safe and well if not somewhat frustrated by their predicament. We have had numerous radio comms with them over the last couple of days as you might imagine. Conversation and jokes are apparently still flowing. Likewise Penguin Echo who are now stuck in Eureka having been within a hundred miles of their big adventure are in as good a spirits as might be expected.

So what went wrong? Well as with virtually all expeditions in any part of the world, mother nature sometimes like to prove that she is the boss - and so she is. In short the plane had to make a scheduled refuelling stop on the ice some hundred miles South of Penguin Delta. The weather was fine with Delta but at the fuel cache a thick ice fog had formed thereby preventing the plane from landing. Since then Penguin Delta have remained stationary knowing that to move away from their airstrip could cause more problems. The corollary being that the team is losing precious days of progress northwards.

Perhaps now is a good time to explain a bit about the logistics of the flights to and from Resolute Bay and the ice for those of you who have the interest. Resolute Bay is some 550 miles from the starting point of the expedition at the start of the Arctic. Even to get to this point, the plane has to land at a small military/weather station base called Eureka to refuel both on the way up and the way back. Eureka is approximately 300 miles from Resolute. Up until this changeover no subsequent refuelling has been required. Now that the expedition has progressed beyond the crucial 87th parallel, some 420 miles from Eureka another refuelling is necessary on the way up (but not on the way back). The difficulty is of course that the second refuelling point is not very akin to Heathrow, JFK or indeed Eureka, it is of course a piece of ice that the pilots have chosen as being adequately smooth just South of the 87th parallel. Sometimes the air charter company leaves barrels of fuel marked with a locating satellite beacon in anticipation, other times, such as with our flight, a second plane carrying the fuel goes in tandem to the fuel cache. Either way the predicament we find ourselves in would still be the same. The problem is of course that there is nobody at the fuel cache to provide weather information. The satellite images can only show a certain amount of info.

Apologies to all the nearest and dearest who believed that the adventure was over for Penguin Delta. We hope tomorrow is better.

The drift for Penguin Delta has been to the West South West leaving them at 88degs10minsN 76degs39minsW. One hundred and ten to the Pole, three hundred and five behind.