Back & Busy

Helloooo!

I've been back for a week now - sorry for not posting anything yet. I had an amazing day in Montevideo - what a nice place!! Imagine: sunny summer weather, a very relaxed city, beaches, palm trees, good food and carnaval... :) I have many photos, and I will post them here soon.

Our trip back was amazingly fast, within 24 hours from leaving the ship I was back in Norwich! It's good to be back. I've been sleeping a lot and now trying to get back in full force at work - not easy.

So check back soon, and in the mean time check Angelika's blog for some really nice photos of Montevideo. She's still on the ship, for another month!

Hanneke

The last days on the ship

Hello!

I'm sorry for the lack of updates! I've been working really hard to finish everything. I had to write my part of the cruise report, and work in the lab a whole day. Then in between all of that, I took care of the cruise website. So I was running around like mad and worked nearly non-stop for 2 days. That's why I haven't been able to post anything or write the promised what-am-I-doing blog. Also, for a while we were in the middle of the ocean, with grey skies and nothing to take photos of.

We had a science night on Friday, where I gave a short talk:



I've had an amazing time, and some experiences that cannot be captured in photographs. A few examples: standing alone on the deck looking at the southern hemisphere night sky, seeing the Milky Way in its full glory for the first time, seeing bioluminescent plankton from the back of the ship (little blue sparks in the water), seeing the comet McNaught through binoculars... And in a slightly different way: spending the night in the crew bar slightly drunk, dancing (hadnt done that in ages, have missed it!), and becoming a sub mariner. That last one might need some explanation ;) Apparantly you become a sub mariner if you dive down and see the dolphins rise. As I had a necklace of a dolphin, they put it at the bottom of a glass filled with rum. If I was able to drink it in one go and catch the dolphin in my mouth, I would be a sub mariner. Hehe.

We had the official end-of-cruise dinner yesterday, and today we've been finishing everything and cleaning up. I suddenly realized that it's really over now, only a few days till I'm back in Norwich. Today we took a end-of-cruise group photo:



Anyway, today I finally finished all my work, and took a well deserved long break on the deck. The weather was perfect today, about 20 degrees, a bit of wind, completely clear sky. I used lots of sunscreen but still got sunburned. It's crazy how we went from the Antarctic to the almost tropics in a few days! I spent some time on the deck reading a book and listening to music, but mostly spotting wildlife. Loic and I saw some dolphins, really amazing!

Here's me enjoying the sunshine and a photo of Kelly, Abby and Nick that I took with Angelika's camera - I like it!



We are arriving in Montevideo tomorrow morning. We have a whole day to explore the town (and celebrate Mardi Gras :) ). We have to be out of our cabins at 9 AM on Tuesday morning. Our flight leaves at 16:40, I'm not sure what the plans for that day are... Maybe spending 7 hours in Montevideo airport?? I haven't seen that one yet!! :)

Unless I find time to post something tomorrow (I doubt it!) this will be my last post for a while. It's been an amazing time, such a good experience, I've learnt a lot and enjoyed it a lot. I would have liked to spend some more time between the icebergs, but I'm also looking forward to coming home :)

A big thank you for everyone who has been following me and who has left comments!! Stay tuned for some pictures of Montevideo soon :)

Albatross & sunset

Hello again!

Just a short post, as I haven't had time to work on anything longer today. We're crossing the Drake Passage at the moment, infamous for very turbulent seas, but for us it's been a perfect day: sunny and a calm sea. The sea is a very nice blue color, and as we're going north the sea surface temperature as well as the air temperature are quickly going up. Tonight both were about 6 degrees Celsius instead of around 0 yesterday! Not much to take photos of though...

Just this albatross that circled the ship for a while, it came quite close! I made this composition image of some photos I took.

The sunset tonight was impressive!

That's all for now, I'm going to join the others in the bar :)

Homeward Bound

Hello!

Sometime during Monday night we headed northwards and now we're on the way to Montevideo (Uruguay). We should arrive there sometime during Sunday or Monday, and we're flying out on Tuesday. We just got our tickets, and we're flying Montevideo-Madrid and then Madrid-London. Not bad!

Yesterday started foggy again, but every now and then the fog cleared and we got some sun :) We were surrounded by icebergs again. I have to confess that I did miss the most amazing display as I was on the phone with Paul... I thought I could go take some photos after dinner, but of course the clouds came back and the ice bergs were further away. But I still got some nice pictures. These were taken in the afternoon when the sky was amazingly blue!

This was the beginning of the really amazing display, but at this point it was still cloudy. In the photo on the left you can see all the layers of the ice berg!

After dinner, it was cloudy again but at the horizon there was still a gap in the clouds, and the sunset made the colors very pretty!

Yesterday I got 2 comments on this blog saying they liked reading it but had no idea what I am doing here... So especially for Rob and Aline, I'll post a blog today explaining what I do. It has to wait till later today though, as I have some work to do now ;)

Quiet foggy day

Last night we had to deploy Argo floats in the dark, so they put a spotlight on the deck, and this light attracted many birds. It was kind of magical, the dark misty night and all the birds flying in the light near the ship. One bird ended up on the deck though, and had problems lifting up. Mark managed to catch him and threw him back in the air. It was an Antarctic Petrel:

This morning we worked hard, as the CTD stations were close together and only about 300 m deep, so they didn't take long. It was very sunny this morning and we passed a HUGE iceberg. It was really enormous! Here are some pictures I took:

The iceberg was surrounded in its own cloud/fog, it was an amazing sight!



I put these panorama shots together, the first one is made up of 8 (!) photos, the second one of 4.

Shortly after, it became foggy and it stayed like that for the rest of the day. What a pity! But it did make it easier for me to go to bed, I slept for about 4 hours in the afternoon. I got up just in time for dinner. Karen wanted to explain something to me, while everybody else was already at dinner. Then the bridge called, and told us to look out of the window at starboard side really quickly - there was a small iceberg with about 5-6 Adelie penguins really close to the ship, an amazing site!!! Too bad there wasn't enough time to grap my camera.

This is my last watch! We already finished all the CTD's, we are now just going back along the line to do some more measurements. Sometime during the night that will be done, we will turn around and from then on, we're on the way home! It doesn't mean that we don't have work to do though - now we need to process all the data and work on the cruise report. I am chosen to work in the "salt mine", this is where we analyze the salinity samples. This work is infamous for being very boring and mind killing, so we'll see how that goes. We'll have training tomorrow. Besides that, I need to work on the bathymetry data. We want to finish the cruise report by Friday.

Ohh, here is the link to the Crew Page that I made with Angelika. It's so nice to walk around the ship and see familiar faces instead of new faces all the time.

That's all, let's hope for a sunny day and more photos tomorrow :)

Exciting day!

Hello!

Yesterday I finally gave in to my lack of sleep and slept for most of the day. That's why I didn't post anything, but I'll make it up with a LOT of photos today :)

Ohh here are the results of the cups I sent to the bottom of the ocean, they shrink due to the pressure of the water:

We've been doing more work lately, we are sending the CTD down, it takes water samples at 8 different depths, and when it comes back we need to sample the water for salinity and O18. Here is Karel doing some sampling, and me trying to tie the box with bottles down.

Angelika and I were on a mission today... We want to make the same kind of photo page with all the members of crew. We see so many faces and we have no idea who they are of what they do... So we walked around with a camera and a notebook and bothered everyone. It was so much fun!! Most of the crew is really friendly once you show some interest, and have lots of interesting stories to tell. And we found out the advantage of making friends with the crew immediately...

Doug (the deck engineer) took us to the "fo'c'sle", this word comes from forecastle and means the front deck of the ship. It was all iced up, and really amazing!! We took so many pictures. Everything was covered in a very thick layer of ice, I've never seen anything like it. Here's some of the pictures we took. Sorry it's a lot of photos, but I couldn't choose, I liked them all! :)

We spent some time looking at the first test of the micro structure. This is some complicated instrument, to be honest I don't really know what it does, but it measures things on a smaller scale to study turbulence in the ocean. It's supposed to go down by itself and come up by itself as well. They are scared it will get lost though, as there are still some problems. So they're doing lots of tests.

This is me with Doug, and a photo I took of an albatross. Though Adrian told me it's a petrol, but I think it looks like an albatross so I call it albatross :P

Then Doug took us to the engine room, where Tom gave us a tour. That was really cool! It was great to see all the engines, the water system, the sewage system, the heating etc.

Finally, here's Pat and me in the bar for crew members :) And a picture of the typical view today. The sea has really calmed down since yesterday night and is nearly flat. We are surrounded by small icebergs with amazing shapes! We also saw seals and a whale today, what a day!!

I'm really enjoying it... now that I find my way around the ship without getting lost, know the names of most crew members... I start to feel at home on the ship :)

We only have about 2 days of science left! If everything goes to plan, we will be done with all the measurements by Tuesday afternoon. After that, we will be processing the data but we don't have to work in watches anymore. That'll be nice! My watch is really nice, but some people are on more difficult watches. Pat works from 16:00-20:00 and from 04:00-08:00, which means I rarely see her! She's either working or sleeping.

So from Tuesday we will be on our way "home", well to Montevideo, which is about 1600 miles from here!

Alright, I have to get ready for dinner now...

Ice & cups

Hello!

Last night was a very rough night. In the end, the captain decided it was unsafe to continue and changed our track in a direction that was safer. I was exhausted by the end of my watch but couldn't fall asleep for a while.

We woke up to calmer seas, though still quite windy. We had to wait for the captain to wake up, so we could turn around and go back to the track where we were before. The drifters are deployed in a straight line, that's why. It took 3 hours to get back. This is how I tie my laptop down when I have to be away from it for a while - I don't want it flying around the room!

The sea is still quite rough and the spray of the waves that crash over the decks has frozen. It looks pretty all covered in a layer of ice, but you have to be careful when you're out on the deck. I helped deploying some drifters today, it was very windy and the deck was slippery.

I went to the bridge cause I had to make a confession... I bumped into the phone in the room where we work, and kind of broke it. I bump into everything with these waves ;) Anyway, it was nice to see the bridge, it's so big and has a nice view. I took a picture of the ice covered ship from there.

We deployed nearly all of the drifters now, only a couple left. When that is done, we will turn around and go back along the same track, this time using the CTD, an instrument that is lowered down to the ocean bottom. We are expecting the first station at 5 AM in the morning, this is the deepest one at 4000m. So everybody was preparing the polystyrene cups that we are sending down - more on that later. When I walked around with the cups from my school kids, I ran into Hamish, the purser (if I got that right, I am still not used to ship-language and I still go to my ROOM instead of my CABIN ;) ) He told me to follow him, and he gave me the official stamp of the ship to put on all my cups. That was really nice! It wasn't until later that I discovered that there is a spelling mistake in their official stamp - it says Antartica instead of AntarCtica. I wonder if he knows!! Anyway, here are some photos of my cup. In the last one they are in a tight cause that's how they go down to the ocean bottom.

Another thing I worked on today is the People Page of the cruise website. Instead of a long list of names and email addresses, it is now a photo board. Even Shackleton has a place on it ;) I also wrote the diary for today as the people I asked to do it told me at 22:00 that they didn't have time... oh well, it gave me something to do during my watch.

That's all for now! I want to get some sleep... I don't think I can be bothered to get up at 5 AM for the CTD, there will be many more stations to come and I think my cups will still look cool if they go down to 3000m instead of 4000m. I need my sleep ;)

Krill, icebergs, penguins and... work!

This morning we woke up to a bit bigger waves, cloudy skies and surrounded by icebergs! After breakfast I started my first watch with Angelika (the watch leader) and Nuno. Kurt is also on our watch but I think he was working with his own instrument, I didn't really see him.

The first thing we did was putting all the drifters back inside. The deck was wet, the waves pretty big, the clouds amazing and some ice bergs nearby! I regretted having to work, I wanted to take pictures ;). The rest of the watch was quiet, every hour we have to check that all the instruments are still logging and we took a water sample that will be used to measure salinity. I am responsible for the bathymetry data (depth of the ocean). It's very simple, every day I download the data of the previous day. I played with the data a bit in Matlab, it's quite interesting :)

There was a bucket with krill in the science lab, fascinating creatures! I took some photos. Some people ate the krill!! I don't know why you would want to try that ;) but they said it didn't actually have much taste.




And this is me throwing up... hehe no just kidding, Loïc took this picture of me taking pictures of the krill in the bucket.



The watch finished at 12, which is also lunch time. After lunch I worked a bit more on the bathymetry data, and every now and then I ran out to take photos of ice bergs. It's snowing though and quite windy so it's not very pleasant on the deck - I am scared to be blown overboard ;) At some point a big wave crashed over the ship and I got wet - oops.





At about 14:30 we reached our first station, very exciting! I didn't have anything to do, so I just watched how they let the first CTD in. This is an instrument that you lower down to near the ocean bottom on a cable. On the way, it measures some variables and it also takes water samples at different depths. They also deployed the first drifter at this station! From now on, stations are quite close together so there will be a lot of work to do.



I got distracted by some icebergs... with penguins on them!! That was such an amazing sight, especially how they manage to stay on while big waves go over the iceberg. The shapes of the icebergs are sometimes really fascinating, I took many pictures! Too bad it's such an overcast day. I also forgot to put some gloves on, and had to go back inside cause my hands were seriously freezing off.

This was the first ice berg I saw that had penguins on it.. quite far away though, just look for some black dots ;)



This one was closer, amazing!! I zoomed in to one of my pictures... again I was wishing I did buy a larger zoomlens for this trip!




Now I have to get ready for dinner, and then I will be on another watch from 20:00 till midnight. Not much chances of getting sleep down here! :)

The sea is getting rougher quickly now, let's see how that's going... Anyway, have to run to get changed in time for dinner!

First day on the ship

I slept really well, as I always do on ships :) A bit too short though, I stayed up too late (till 1 AM) and we had to get up at 7:00 as breakfast is at 7:30!! Too early!

It was a really sunny day, so after breakfast we headed to the upper deck to enjoy the sunshine, the view and even a couple of whales in the distance. There definately are worse places to be :)
Karen and Andy were one deck below us, see the photo. Karen is the PI (Principal Investigator) on this cruise, basically the boss ;) And Andy is her postdoc.



They unpacked all the drifters (we have 40 of them!) and layed them out on the deck. This is what they look like:



Pat and I went there to see if we could help, but we couldn't really do anything so we just sat in the sun and enjoyed the view... not bad ;) The orange jackets are so bright I need to wear my sunglasses or I am blinded by my own jacket!! They also made us wear the helmet, so we look very professional but we were not actually doing anything special.



I thought it would be interesting to show you what the ship looks like. This is the room that I'm sharing with Angelika. My bed is the messy one near the door ;)



This is the room where everybody is working, well at least the people working on computers. The part that you can see in the photo on the right is really nice with big windows!



Adrian made a weather forecast, we're going to have storm tomorrow, but hopefully it will pass quickly.



There was not much work to do for those who weren't preparing their instruments, so Pat and I enjoyed some sunshine on the upper deck. It got quite windy and cold though! I had to put my hoody up because my hair was blowing in my face all the time, and Pat took this nice picture of me :)

In the afternoon we had a fire drill! We were told it was a major incident, there were 4 casualties. We had to take our life jackets and survival suits from our cabins, and meet at the muster point (in the bar). To build a hospital in the bar, people with first aid experience had to stay, while the others were told to wait in the saloon. Some had to volunteer to carry casualties to the hospital. Because the fire got out of control, we were told to abandon ship. This means putting your life jacket on and get into the life boat. The life boats are self righting, which means they turn themselves around when they capsize. To make this work, you have to strap yourself in.




Pat does look a bit too happy for someone who has to abandon ship, but hey :) Fortunately it was all just an excercise!

We saw an albatross today! It was the biggest one there is (I forgot the name, oops) and it was following the ship for a long time. Very impressive, it is huge but so elegant, just gliding along. I tried to take some photos, here are some zooms of the photos I took. I'm sorry for the quality, I wish I had a better lens!



We also saw a very pretty sunset and moonrise... And now I have to go to bed, as I really need to get some sleep, and I will be working on my first watch tomorrow from 8 AM till noon.

PS I wrote the cruise diary for today with Angelika... and she decided to put a picture of me as picture of the day!

Rothera

The last part of the flight to Rothera was simply amazing! We saw icebergs, mountains, glaciers, beautiful bays... Camera's were clicking constantly ;)

These photos were taken during landing:




The landing was very smooth, though for a moment I thought we were going to land in the water, as the beginning of the runway is right at the edge. This is the plane in Rothera, and us walking towards the base:



Somebody from the base was kind enough to take us for a walk before boarding the ship! It was nice to stretch our legs and to see something of Rothera, it looks like an amazing place!

We walked up to the top of a hill, and had a nice view of the ship from there:



We walked along some snowfields to a beach, hoping to see some penguins or seals, but they were all hiding. The icebergs in the bay were really amazing though, everybody took lots of photos.





Finally, this is us walking back to the base, and Patama boarding the ship:



I would have loved to spend some more time on the base, but we had to get to the ship as it was about to leave! I did get the chance to have a quick chat with Stephen, who I've been in touch with a few times over the internet, but I had never met him in person. I've been reading his weblog for quite a while now, and it was fun to meet him in person! He is in Rothera for 18 months as a technician.

We boarded the ship, and were shown our cabins. Almost everyone has a private cabin, but Angelika and I are sharing a 4-bed cabin. Not bad, it's big! We have our own bathroom in the cabin.

Shortly after leaving (I didn't even notice we had left, the ship is very quiet!) we had a meeting with Hamish. He is a very funny guy, and told us all about safety on the ship. We had to put our life jackets on and sit in the lifeboat. Very impressive, I wouldn't want to spend lots of time in there... After the safety talk, we had to change for dinner quickly. The dinner is together with the officers (including the captain) and the dress code is formal. So the guys have to wear a shirt and ties, and I even wore a skirt :) You can have a 5 course dinner if you want, I thought 3 courses were enough ;)

After dinner we had a science meeting, where Karen showed us around the ship, and we unpacked some boxes. The ship is really nice! I still get lost on it, but I guess that will get better soon. And anyway, there is always somebody around to show you the way, the crew is really friendly.

After the meeting, I called Paul from my cabin. We have internet and even phone on the ship, all through satellite. It was so unreal to be able to talk to him from my cabin, while looking out and see some icebergs floating by... very nice :)

At night I helped Andy with the cruise website. Take a look, I think it's a really nice website!

That's all for now, coming soon: photos of the first day on the ship :)

Long journey!

We left Norwich at about 9 in the morning, and got to Heathrow at 11:45. We were supposed to fly to Madrid at 15:25, but they told us we were booked on the 12:15 flight! So we rushed through security and ran to the gate, only to find out the plane had a 45 minutes delay. It was a pretty flight and I had a window seat. This is a mountain range near the coast in the north of Spain:



We got to Madrid at about 16:00. When we picked up our boarding cards for the next flight, they told us it was delayed until 3 AM!! So we spent 11 hours in the airport of Madrid... It's quite big but really empty. It was quite boring to sit around and wait for so long.
This is us killing time:




The flight from Madrid to Santiago (Chile) took 13 hours. I was really tired, and fell asleep immediately after dinner, and slept for 6 hours! For me, it was the first time on a flight where you had a screen in the seat in front of you, nice! You can decide which film you want to see anytime you want, listen to music, even play games :)
Unfortunately I sat in the middle of the plane, so I didn't see anything at all during the flight.

We got to Santiago shortly after 1 PM local time, picked up our luggage and checked in for the next flight. We had 7 hours this time. They gave us another free meal, this one was really nice! It was a large buffet with really nice food and lots of cakes, I was happy :)

It was strange to suddenly find yourself in the Summer! It was quite warm in Santiago and the sun was really bright. At night we played frisbee in the parking lot of the airport. These are two photos taken in the airport, in the one on the right you can see how expensive food is in Chile... no just kidding, $1000 is about 1 pound. It's easy to feel rich :)




I had a window seat on the flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas (with a stop in Puerto Montt), but unfortunately on the wrong side, the Andes was on the other side of the plane and I only saw clouds. The sunset was really nice though...



I was so tired that I didn't even notice taking off from Puerto Montt, and I slept most of the flight till we got to Punta Arenas shortly after midnight. Unfortunately the agent wasn't there to pick us up, so we had to call him and wait for him. By this time we were so tired of hanging around in airports, we all longed for a bed! By 2 AM we got to our hotel, we could finally take a shower and sleep in a real bed, after 44 hours of travelling!

We could only sleep for 5 hours though, we had to have breakfast at 8:00. At 8:45 we were taken back to the airport (so we didn't get to see Punta Arenas at all, such a shame!). It was really exciting though to finally get to the Dash-7 (the British Antarctic Survey plane that is taking us to Rothera).
Here are some photos of us boarding the plane:





It's a really cool plane!! You can just walk around and our luggage is in the cabin with us. We can make tea for ourselves and there are biscuits. The pilots are really friendly and you can walk up to the cockpit anytime for a chat and a nice view :)
The first part of the flight was really nice, with good views of Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego. Now we can just see clouds and ocean, and it will be that way until we reach Rothera, where it is cloudy at the moment as well. The ship is already there, and it's supposed to leave as soon as we get there... so no chance of seeing Rothera eihter, we are not very lucky!





The photo of Punta Arenas is taken especially for someone who told me Punta Arenas is not on the coast... HAHA :P As you can see, the coast is indeed MILES away from the city, I can really understand you wouldn't notice the presence of the ocean.

We should be arriving in Rothera in about 1.5 hours... (total flight time is about 4 hours!) My laptop battery is dying now so this is all, I'll post this blog as soon as I get internet access.

Update: I am now on the ship! Arriving to Rothera by plane was amazing, the views were simply incredible!! We spent about an hour at Rothera station, and someone there was kind enough to take us for a walk. I have many photos but they deserve a seperate post, so check back soon! We've been on the ship for about 5 hours now, and I had so many new impressions that I am really tired... So sorting out photos for the new post will have to wait till tomorrow. Till then!

Ready for departure!

Hi all,

We're leaving UEA on Sunday at 8:45 in the morning. We're travelling to Heathrow by coach, then flying to Madrid where we board a plane all the way to Santiago (in Chile, it takes 14 hours!) late at night. We'll arrive there in the morning and continue to Punta Arenas (at the southern tip of Chile). We will spend the night there.

From there, we will fly to Rothera and board the ship (on Tuesday).

It's all very exciting!! Patama and I have organized a small goodbye party tonight, it should be fun. On Saturday I am probably packing, we're lucky we can bring lots of luggage and that all the warm clothes are already on the ship. (We had to try them on last July when it was 30 degrees! :D)

So my next message will probably be from Antarctica!! Till then!!

Hanneke :)