Comrades, it's been a few weeks since we left port in Amsterdam, and life on board has settled into a relatively quiet but rocky transit to the Arctic waters off Greenland. The North Atlantic in springtime tends to be a rough ocean, with cold winds and high seas making life difficult for mariners. Our ship, the Arctic Sunrise is an ice-class vessel with a round hull and no keels - which means that it rolls and pitches like a piece of cork on the water - and has been aptly nicknamed 'the washing machine' for obvious reasons.
Despite some rocky days at sea, life has settled into a routine. There is lots to be done, prepared and finished, and our crew has worked overtime to get the Arctic Sunrise ready for action. Greenpeace is here to protest Cairn Energy's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic waters of Baffin Bay - drilling in such sea depths this far north has never been tried before and poses obvious risks to the environment. To date, Cairn has not released details of their spill prevention and clean-up plans in case disaster strikes. Following last year's BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, those concerns feel more than justified.
At least we have now found the Leiv Eiriksson, the rig chartered by Cairn Energy that will do most of the drilling in the iceberg-strewn seas between Canada and Greenland. It is the size of a small cathedral, but in this large ocean little more than a needle in a haystack. The old, proverbial David against Goliath scenario appears to be in the making, so stay tuned for future updates.
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