On the way home

Hi Everyone,
Sorry I've been negligent posting here, but I didn't get any emails from Michael for a while then they piled up when I was busy. There's been no update on the map of the Gould, but I know they've left Palmer. Timeline is still unclear though. Here are his answers to some of my questions and some other happenings. Enjoy and Happy Weekend!

Wednesday, Sept. 30:
The weather here has been good by the standards. Cloudy for the most part, but the winds have been calm. That is until today. It started off nice and sunny but around 3 this afternoon it turned foul and hasn't let up since. The pressure dropped off of the charts and we've had sustained 40-50 kt winds with blowing snow. It's pretty awesome to see such an even where the snow gets picked up and plastered to any vertical surface. It's also really neat to walk into the lee of a building or such and listen to the erie peacefulness of the howling winds, and also watching the turbulent flows.

I have been sleeping (and eating for the most part) on the ship while we're docked here. We had to plow through a solid sheet of ice to be able to dock here at Palmer, but other than that its been avoiding the occasional small iceberg. The ship isn't really an ice breaker, it's just rated to go through a foot of first year ice at steady speed. Apparently in a previous year the captain had to come in and break up the ice at station and then do many doughnuts to clear it all out. This year we just came in backed out a little bit and then turned the boat around to face the proper way (starboard to the dock).

As for me I've been using a good deal of my time around here helping out with the station kitchen, trying to problem solve some of the issues with the oxygen titration, skiing a bit, and catching up on classes. For classes I've caught up on the lectures, but I still have several fluids HWs looming over my head. It has been an intense few days of watching videos and taking notes, but it sure is nice to have the videos.

We are slated to shove off at 1600 local tomorrow. It think the plan is to try Hugo a 2nd time. The winds should have pushed the ice that was in the way out of the way, but then again those same winds will make landing stupid. Sonja and a couple others from the raytheon crew are the ones that would land using a zodiac. The mission isn't that critical, it's just a GPS that is measuring changes in altitude for glacial rebound. If we can't get it now the LMG will be back in a few weeks for the first round of summer station scientist and they can try again then.

Thursday, Oct.1:
Just an update on our runnings around. We tried again for Hugo island last night and I think the ice was too much again, so during the night we turned around to head for a cast site for the LTER (Long Term Ecological Research). LTER is one of the big projects that goes on down here every summer. Anyway after we get there I think we'll give Hugo one more go. Oh also Bjorn, the guy in charge of the station at Hugo island is Jocelynns husband [Jocelyn is an awesome woman who works in our division at NOAA in Boulder doing carbon14 dating to trace Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs)], so Colm feels a bit more pressure to try and fix the GPS. It's been a bit iffy if we really need to get this done now anyway. We've been getting a wishy washy message from phone calls as to whether or not it is of high importance.

Friday, Oct.2:
Today was a mostly sunny day so we could see land and icebergs most of the time. There was one iceberg that looked like it was calving, but I think it was really waves just getting shot up the side. I don't remember what I last told you about our plans, but we couldn't find a good place this AM to land at Hugo. We went out for several hours and did a cast around 11 local and now we're back hanging out at Hugo waiting to see if it's good in the AM (now ish for you). I hope that this will be our last try at Hugo even though we have more time on teh schedule. Some additional time in/around PA would be nice. One of the electronics techs on board has a house down here so he knows the area well and could point us to a good day trip if we have time.

Oh and supposedly there was a whale this afternoon, but I missed that while working on fluids. I'm trying to balance work with seeing the sights.

Saturday, Oct.3:
We're still sitting on Hugo. I don't know why we're wasting our time, but it is what it is. i guess some of the lingering is because the Drake is supposed to be bad right now (I'd like to see a bad Drake).