Monday, November 29, 2010

Passing through the Islands

So we've finished our crossing of the Drake passage with minimal damage to equipment, personnel, and our tummies.  The first part of the crossing was fairly rough (had some random sets of 20-25' waves), but things (seas, winds, stomachs) seemed to settle down nicely during the later part of the trip. Some of that is probably also due to folks getting their "sea legs" which made for more people at mealtime in the galley. Some people were even brave enough to attempt to shower before we made it into the shelter of the South Shetland Islands. For those not familiar with ship-board showering in wavy seas: get in your shower, stand on a skateboard, and then have somebody spray you with a garden hose that's wiggling back and forth. It can be very challenging at times.

We have pretty long days here as we're in the late spring/early summer and our current latitude is 63 degrees 29 minutes S so a lot of folks were up on the bridge over the last hour (from 8pm - 9pm local time -- fyi: local time is Chilean time which is 2 hours ahead of the US East Coast) as we passed by Low Island. Saw some wildlife as dusk began including a pair of humpback whales and a dozen or so penguins that swam by the ship.

Tomorrow we dock at Palmer Station to offload people and cargo and continue to prepare the ship for our science experiments (more on that in a few days). The MTs (Marine Techs - Chance, Mark, and Meriedi) and ETs (Electronic Techs - Tony, Mike) and (MST- Ethan, MPC- Herb) on the ship have all been super helpful in assisting us with setting up our equipment and helping us build things to ensure our science projects work well. No pics today in the blog-- none of the animals we saw were close enough to get a good photo of, but I'm sure we'll have some soon.

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