Saturday 10 January 2004
First week at Halley
I've finally made it to Halley! We eventually finished relief late last Friday night after 6 days and nights of work. All the cargo was safely removed from the ship and a lot of waste and empty fuel drums were removed from the base.
During relief I was doing quite a few different jobs - offloading cargo from the ship, refuelling the bulk fuel containers and even skidooing across the sea ice and up to the ice shelf, but I didn't get my first sight of Halley until it was all finished.
Once everything was done I was taken up to the base on the back of a sledge. It took about an hour from the edge of the ice shelf but as we approached the building slowly got bigger until I could start to recognise some of the platforms I've seen so many times in photos.
The base is fantastic. The bar and lounge area is really cosy and there's more space than I was expecting. I've also been over to see the Piggott platform where I'll be working, and a few of the outlying science experiments.
After all the hard work of relief we were given the weekend off, but since then I've begun my handover with last season's data manager. We've been working hard (8am - 7pm, six days a week), but I'm enjoying learning about my job and haven't had any problems yet.
Last night I had my field training which involved staying overnight in a pyramid tent and cooking dinner on a primus stove. It was great fun, and now means I'm trained to co-pilot flights in the twin otters. There are some trips coming up to some of the remote data monitoring stations so hopefully I'll get a trip soon.
Posted by simon at 6:23 PM