Season's beginnings

By now it has been some time since I started a new season at Palmer Station and it certainly has been a long time since I’ve written anything on the blog here. It’s high time for an update. This 2015_2016 summer season will be my tenth season working in Antarctica and working for the USAP. After doing McMurdo 6 times, a spot opened in 2012 at Palmer Station and Sheri agreed that I should take that opportunity  and she might be able to join me in a next year. For a variety of reasons I’ve enjoyed life and work here much much better than I did in "dirty old" McMurdo and I have not looked back since. So you might think that after so many years there will be very few new things left, but that is not the case.

New this year was the fact that it was very uncertain if we were going to be able to get to station at all. When we arrived at the beginning of October (which is the end of the winter) there was still a large area of frozen ocean around in the direct vicinity off station which could possibly be too much to break through. Our vessel is an icebreaker (ABS A1 class ), but it meets its limits with 1 foot thick (30 cm) new ice (as opposed to multi year ice) and we received word from station that ice around station was easily 3 feet thick. Scenarios were made dealing with the possibility of not being able to get close to station. The most likely one seemed to be that we would come within a mile or two of Palmer and after which we would continue our travels on foot over the ice.  Meetings were called and instructions were given on what to do and what to bring in case of this alternative way of traveling.

My berthing.

The Galley. With so little to do during the voyage, the meals
become an important part of the routine.

The gym. I think that staying active while at sea helps fight
off sea sickness. Of course working out can be a bit of a
challenge in rough seas; doing push-ups for instance are
super easy one moment and very hard the next moment.

Shower in the berthing.
Can be hard to do
when the seas are
rough, because how
can you hold on and
wash yourself at the
same time?

We get a chance to help with science
a little bit. Here I am helping  to
process water samples.

Launching a CTD which measures Conductivity, 
Temperature and Depth. Thanks to the LMG this data set
now spans decades.

Excited onlookers.

I don’t think it has happened very often in recent history that the LMG was not able to make it to station, but I do remember that in my second year it happened once that there was so much tightly packed drift ice that the boat could not reach us. At that time we were watching from station the ship go back and forth multiple times,  but every time it made some space the ice closed up immediately around it again and made further progress impossible. They turned around and went back to Chile again. It took a couple of weeks before the people who were scheduled to leave station on that ship were able to hitch a ride from a visiting cruise ship as their (not too shabby) way to get back home.

You can really see the thickness of the ice.

With this knowledge in mind and reaching the ice edge everybody was curious if we were going to be able to break through or not and -now more than ever- we were up on the bridge trying to get the best views possible. You would expect that snow on top of the ice makes it easier for the icebreaker, but the opposite is actually the case, because of the friction it creates. Another effect of the snow on top of the ice was that it dampened the sounds quite a bit. Nothing like the big cracking and crunching sounds which we were expecting. It was going to take very many back and forth motions of the ship, but we were going to make it. It turned out that even though the ice was very thick at places, the top layer was not very solid and thus not as strong as was feared. Meanwhile I think that secretly the captain was delighted, because it gave him a chance to give his personnel an excellent training on how to break ice. After a half a day and a full night of chopping up the ice and making a big turning basin we were able to dock the boat at the pier, much to the relief of most people on board, but even more to the relief of the winter staff on station, because they were ready to leave after many a month of working there.

Working on making a big turning basin.

This picture was taken a couple of
days after arrival and shows well how
much ice there is around station.

Click here is the video of the LMG breaking ice doesn't play

Happy holidays everyone.

Making Ginger Beer

One of the things that I enjoy about being at Palmer Station is the fact that we have use of the kitchen. On our Sunday day off the cooks have a well deserved rest day as well and so everyone has to fend for themselves. This is not as bad as it sounds, because we have Deborah Joe. Who is she? She is our leftover fridge which holds the week’s leftovers, or whatever you’ve set aside for yourself. All is well labeled with the name of the contents and the use-by date. If you’ve completed the little food safety course which is intended to make sure that you know the basics on how to handle food and knives, you are also allowed to make your own culinary creations, especially on Sundays.

A couple of Sundays ago we made Ginger beer.  We had a whole bunch of fresh ginger in the walk-in fridge that was in need of being used, because it was starting to go bad.

Lots of grated ginger.

So you take a bunch of ginger (measurements were not taken at this stage, but in general our consensus was that more ginger = better taste) and grate it to a pulp. Put it in a big pot (think 6 gallons) of boiling water. Add a little bit of lemon and lemon zest. Spice it up some more with some ginger powder and add a pound or 2 of honey. After stirring and boiling for a while you run it through a sieve to strain out most of the solids and you let it cool of till 90F, which despite putting it outside on the deck still took a bit of time. At that temperature you add the activated yeast and you are ready for the next step.

Lime zest smells sooo good.

Then we put the pan on an elevation and put a little plastic tube in it and through the wonders of gravity we were able to siphon the contents to our sanitized bottles. The bottles are of the Dutch beer brand called Grolsch which must be loved throughout the world for their caps which allows you to re-use them over and over again.

Bring all the ingredients to a boil.                                   Siphon into the bottles.                         

After leaving the bottles a couple of days at room temperature to let the yeast do their thing, the end product is ready; super nice bubbly, spicy, heart-warming alcohol free ginger beer.

The end product.

 Now it needs to go in the fridge, because we don’t want the process to continue and we don’t want any exploding bottles.

The empty bottles look nice as well.

Palmer Station season 3

Again it has been a while since I've written anything on our blog, but that will change. Since this blog now has competition form Sheri's individual blog, I'll be forced to write or be forgotten :-).
While Sheri is out gallivanting on the South Georgia Islands, I have returned for my third season at Palmer Station. What's not to like about a small population with great colleagues, being incredibly close to the actual science that's being done, a climate that's not too bad** and proximity to wild life.

My trip of Toulouse - London - Dallas - Denver met with remarkably little inconvenience. A couple of days of training and indoctrination at our headquarters in Denver and then onwards to Santiago where our good luck ran out and we hit some extra hours of delay on our way towards Punta Arenas but that was later compensated by the airlines with some extra air miles.
The 4 days on our vessel the LMG were considerably less sea sickness inducing than the extreme weather that was predicted for us.

Beautiful pancake ice.

I'm always awed by the birds that make the ocean their home; flying so
effortlessly a couple of inches above the waves.

 

Many of us are needed to do the line handling for the ship.

 








 I guess the copious amounts of candied ginger that we bought before we left Punta Arenas was not needed all that much to prevent seasickness, but tasty nonetheless.
 Apart from decent weather we even got treated to a short sighting of 4 orca's (killer whales sounds more impressive).  We seldom see them from Palmer (last season was the first time in a decade that my colleague has seen them), so we were all really excited. Sorry no picture of that because I decided to just look at them.

After arriving at Palmer Station there was a truly frantic period of 6 days of turnover, in which the departing winter-over crew -apart from making their travel plans, cleaning their rooms and packing their bags- try to teach their summer colleagues the ropes of the job (which in the case of us returning folks is much easier than for colleagues that are totally new to the program and  station) and the Logistics department tries to unload all the cargo from the ship (there will be station-wide calls for volunteers to help unload the fresh goods that need to be transferred to the fridge rapidly) and all the emergency teams (like fire fighters and Ocean  Search and Rescue and Glacier Search and Rescue teams) do their turnovers and declare the incoming folks to be responsible from now on. Oh I should not forget the fact that we do a fire drill, in which we get fully dressed in our gear and rescue someone from a "burning" building.

Anyway you get the idea about starting a new season here. Last year's experience seems to repeat itself by the surrounding sea-ice not wanting to relinquish its grip in favor of open water. We are now a couple of months into our season and cannot seem to get rid of the sea ice surrounding us.

Just a reminder of where Palmer is situated and showing Sheri's location

 Let me explain. Palmer Station is surrounded by water which explains why so many marine biologists come here to do their studies, but a majority of that science is done from little rubber boats (Zodiacs) that leave from our station and cannot navigate too well in ice. The other part is done from from our research and supply vessel the LMG.

An image from our webcam; surrounded by ice.

Our webcams can be found here: http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/palWebCam.cfm

The New Adventure Begins

The latest and greatest (?) adventure - South Georgia Island

Today is the first step on the way to South Georgia Island.  After weeks of preparation, in just a couple of hours, the house will be winterized and I'll decamp to a friend's house in Toulouse for the evening.

Leaving for six months isn't new but packing for six months to go to a place without a shop of any kind IS.  For the first time, I've had to pack all of my toiletries.  Two months ago, I started keeping tally of the feminine hygiene supplies used each month.  Two days ago, I counted out and bagged all of the tampons and pads I might need for the months ahead.  It's great to be a woman!

Here's the pile before it made it into the baggage (minus a super pair of Muck waterproof/insulated boots that are waiting for me in England):

It fits!

Here is the clean, mouse-proof and winterized house.

Sunroom

Living Room

Bedroom

Kitchen

Tomorrow morning, I'll fly from Toulouse to London Heathrow, where I'll be met by my newest buddy and future colleague, Rachel.  She'll take me back to her place near Cambridge for the day and I'm certain that we will find and devour our last authentic ethnic food for a long while.  

In the evening, her boyfriend will drive us to Brize Norton Royal Air Force Base and we'll board the Airbus Voyager for the 19 hour flight to the Falkland Islands.

I hope that I'll be able to keep up this blog throughout the 6 months.  It all depends on the internet speed and bandwidth.  Please let me know that you're reading by leaving comments.  I love to hear from readers.