.Monday, January 5, 2009

Hi everyone!

We've set sail for Antarctica! On 5 Jan we left Punta Arenas and we sailed through the Strait of Magellan to the West. Since we arrived previously in Punta Arenas from the east, Charlie, Patrick and I have navigated the complete strait, and that is very cool! rior to the Panama channel, this was a major trade route. If you read nautical stories, there’s many accounts of sailboats being stuck in the Strait for months because of the strong currents and winds. Fortunately, we sailed through smoothly, from GPS waypoint to waypoint, with dark hills, with glaciers in the distance. At about 6 am we left the Strait, straight into the Pacific. It is very desolate here, brownish grass on the hills (or golden as they say in California?), with some snowfields at the summits. When we sailed off we saw a lot of dolphins and that means good luck according to the sailor's lore, so will will stick to that. Unfortunately, the Pacific waves were a bit much for most people, so everyone was pretty seasick, and unfortunately, my ‘stomach of steel’ proved vulnerable as well…

The first days one spends setting up equipment, making lab space workable, unpacking your crates, and generally looking for stuff. You also still need to find out the shortcuts through the maze of the ship, through heavy doors and different staircases, and get lost a lot (pretty annoying...). The Nathaniel B. Palmer is little bit smaller than the Polarstern, the German ship of last year, but everything works pretty similar. Our base of operations is the Hydrolab, which turns out to be the most seasickness-friendly space. It’s even got two windows! We were also shown to a nice place to hang out, the control room of the winches has a lot of windows and you can look at the waves crashing on the aft deck, and at the petrels and albatrosses circling the ship. Unfortunately, there’s beer to sip while watching the waves go by…

Chris from Canada was here since Jan 1 to build up his instrument. That is running now and he is the first one doing measurements! In addition Charlie and Patrick have installed themselves in the container to do iron-free work and they are very happy there. Matt learned that the New York Times is available on the ship's intranet (without images) and he is very happy about that, because now he can follow the American football results. I have a very nice cabin mate Katie. I have not discovered if she has a secret stash of liquor as well. My bottles are safely tucked away in towels under my bed :-). Most people have smuggled something on board. For a second I was afraid that there would be a luggage check (they are allowed to do that) and that would have been a bit embarrassing: to be caught with a bottle of liquor at 33 years old.

There are three different projects on the boat, a British crew will send an unmanned dive boat under the tongue of the Pine Island Glacier, a US team will put out a bunch moorings with all kinds of measuring devices and the DynaLiFe team (that’s us!) will look at the effects of Dynamic Light and iron (Fe) on the phytoplankton in the Amundsen Sea. Everyone on board is helping each other out, and is very friendly. So all systems are go for a nice cruise. You can reach me on anne.alderkamp@nbp.usap.gov, but please text only, no pictures.

All technicians are really super nice, so that is promising. The rest of the crew are philippinos and they speak little English. We do not interact with them too much, so we will see how the contacts with them develop. We have a good team with the 6 of us, so that is alright. And what is very important: there is a good cook! I was afraid of that, since apparently there was a terrible one last year...

We are in the rhythm of 3 warm meals a day (although I cannot say too much about breakfast, since we came back at the ship at 2 am I have slept through everything...) The days are very long right over here; dusk is at 10.30 pm and dawn about 4 am. We are now at 53 South, which is comparable with Holland I think.

OK, I wait for your emails! Like last year, text is not a problem, I will try to send along some nice pictures as soon as I have them. My email here: Anne.Alderkamp@nbp.usap.gov

Hope everyone is well!

Anna