[UPDATE: At 1605 UTC on January 29, the 3Y0Z team was reported 370 nautical miles from Bouvet Island.] The 3Y0Z DXpedition, now on board the Betanzos en route to Bouvet Island, the third most-wanted DXCC entity (now behind Kosovo and North Korea), is still some 600 nautical miles from its destination. The DXpedition had been hoping to be up and running by this week.

“We had another night of rocking and rolling,” team leader Ralph Fedor, K0IR, reported today. “A strong southwesterly wind produced high following seas, resulting in the stern of the ship rising on the approaching wave or swell, the ship surfing down the front of the wave, and the bow plunging into the wave ahead of it. The change in motion produced a change in the migratory pattern of gear and furniture, but the chaotic end results were similar to our last rough ride. Entropy exists.”

Fedor said over the weekend that the team had not restored its maritime mobile stations, due to difficulty in securing the equipment to prevent damage.

The Betanzos is moving at nearly 9 knots, which Fedor said was a compromise between creature comfort and structural stresses and getting to Bouvet. Team leaders have been working out flight sequencing to transport gear from the Betanzos to Bouvet and met with the helicopter pilots over the weekend.

“We have a lot of ‘stuff’ to get ashore as fast as possible in the weather windows Mother Nature sees fit to give us,” Fedor said.