So, with the heli-ops team still laughing we took off, running low across the water and then past the stricken Nisshin Maru, with her double-sided support from the fuel tanker Oriental Bluebird on her port side and the much smaller catcher ship, Yushin Maru No.2, on the starboard side.

Within minutes we were amongst the ice. To begin with it didn't seem that impressive. I have been listening to the ice survey results as they come back each day, and was imagining something quite different. So instead, picture one of those lorries with polystyrene packing cases that spill out of the back and all those little white bobbles collecting in the storm drains, making little snow drifts at the side of the road. It did not compute with the image in my head.

But then of course I was way up high, 2,000 feet above. The little bobbles were lumps of ice lacing together and stretching out for miles in some places, across the water.

As we flew further, sometimes over open water, sometimes over much larger ice, the tell tale signs of the beginning of an Antarctic winter unfolded before me. At one point water, seconds later a huge iceberg and still further on, clumping pack ice, with chunks twelve metres across gently jostling for position on the soft swell. Crabeater seals, woken from their icy slumbers, growled up at our rowdy red helicopter, flopping into the water as we flew over.

Apart from the magnificent views, we actually had important work to carry out. Since we arrived to assist the Nisshin Maru, we have gathered on the Esperanza's bridge whenever the ice spotters return. Every day is different - ice four miles south, ice 20 miles to the east, a long finger of ice arching round north of us... and of course each day we, like the ice, drift, sometimes closer, some times further away.

The winter is coming to Antarctica. Some days it's hard to remember that, when you stand on the deck with morning tea, the sun shining and the blue waters as still as a pond. The air is cold, sure enough, sometimes down to five below. But with the sun on your back watching for passing orcas, the cruel nature of the conditions here is easily forgotten. It is the coldest, windiest and driest place on earth and vicious storms can blow up in an instant. The first day we arrived to offer help to the fleet the sun was shining in the morning, with clear visibility. Within a couple of hours visibility had dropped and it had begun to snow. Another hour later it was all change again. It is incredibly unpredictable and the changing season only aggravates that.

I got a stark reminder about the coming freeze up in the air when Hughie pointed out that the place we were flying over, that was filled with newly frozen, crunching ice, was where we and the whaling fleet were drifting just a day earlier.

Frank just stepped into the office as I am writing and I asked him when winter starts in Antarctica. "March" he replied. I checked the date on my watch. March is only a week away.

He then started telling me, with some relish, that come June and July, the ice freezes at a rate of three or four miles a day. With a laugh he then recounted how Shackleton was "disappointed to find ice at 57 degrees south" in the Spring.."57 degrees" I squeaked! (We are currently at 73 degrees south). "Yeah, yeah, but that was in November". Oh well... that's okay.

I just stepped out onto the frosty bridge wing to check the temperature - a balmy 1 degree Celsius. Winter is still a little way off yet.

- Sara