Sunday 21 December 2003
Sea Ice
We're making good progress towards Halley although we've been hitting
patches of sea ice for a few days now. The day we first reached solid ice
was quite special. The sun set at around 8pm and we watched it rise again
just after 10pm. We saw Minke whales in front of the boat and a Weddell
seal flopping across the ice trying to get out of the way of the ship.
My cabin is right at the bow of the ship so the whole room is shaking as
we crunch our way through the ice. Standing outside on the bow and looking
down is an awesome sight. Huge sheets of ice crack then calve in front of
your eyes. Car-sized chunks of ice are torn off and thrown aside. In every
direction as far as you can see there's nothing but sheets of ice,
puncuated by the occasional iceberg. Today we could see the coast for the
first time, plus a few emperor penguins dotted about on the ice - another
indication that we're nearing our destination.
As well as sightseeing there's been plenty more to keep us busy over the
last week. We've been doing refresher courses on first aid, radio
operations and camp craft plus we've had talks about the vehicles we'll be
working with during relief (snowmobiles and snocats) and about cargo
handling. Yesterday the doctor taught a few of us how to insert canulars
into people's arm (like you have if you're on a drip). We spent a couple of
hours happily jabbing needles into each others veins - how's that for a
trust building exercise!
I've also been helping out with some science which is going on from the
ship. We've been dropping temperature gauges into the sea which measure the
sea temperature down to 1.8 kilometres. They are being used to investigate
a phenomena called polynyas, which are regions of the sea which are
significantly warmer than their surroundings (and hence ice free). We've
been using one to get closer to Halley, but why they form is not really
understood.
The powers that be have been busy planning all the details such as jobs
during relief and room allocations. I'm going to be working on ship-side
cargo handling, which means I'll be staying on the ship while we're parked
up against the ice shelf. I'll help getting the cargo off the boat and onto
sledges which will be pulled up to the ice shelf by snocats. Relief is a
very busy time (we work in two, 12 hour shifts) so I probably won't have
too much time to write anything over the next week or so. Unfortunately
Christmas day will just be another work day for us so I'll take this
opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
Just as a reminder, you can find more up to date stuff at Rhian's
diary (a fellow winterer, and much better writer than me anyway), and
on the Shackleton's diary pages (updated weekly, follow the links in the sidebar).
Posted by simon at 3:24 PM