Brian Powell

8/11/05: Well, after three days of searching with one day at a potential site, we have given up searching for a good location to set up our ice station for experiments. Every floe we have gone to has broken apart. One requiring us to rush out and rescue some equipment after the floe split about 10 meters behind the hut. The ice is just too thin. It isn't as thick as it used to be. We are heading west and performing another track of CTD measurements, then along the western slope of the Maud Rise, we will hope to find better ice conditions, moor to a floe, and drift back towards the NE corner of the Rise. Shortly, we will begin relying on the ocean/ice model that I have been working on in order to make our decisions on where we should go. It's always specious to trust model output... During the one long term potential station, I was doing some work on the ship when I spotted a large emperor penguin come out of the water and start inspecting the ship. I grabbed my camera and got a picture (which should appear in the pictures also) of it before it headed back into the water. The food on the ship has started to change slightly. We ran out of fresh lettuce and tomatoes about 4 days ago (it lasted much longer than I had expected) so now we have red and green cabbage salad. Most dinner/lunch entrees have been quite good without much to complain about except for last night's fish du jour: deep fried canned tuna. That was one to skip. The chicken parmesan of today was quite excellent, so really only one terrible meal thus far. I was enjoying the tranquil quiet sleep that I could get when we were drifting with the ice, but now that we are on the move again, I must go back to fitful sleep in the midst of clanging noise.

Well, tomorrow we will arrive upon the location for our 10 day ice station. This will give us a chance to finally stretch our legs after 3 weeks on the ship. I will be helping to build a meteorological weather station about 1km from the ship, which will give me a good bit of time away from the steel confines we've been living within. Phase 1 has been quite successful so far. We have been doing CTD casts 24 hours a day for a week now and have found (or confirmed) some interesting results around Maud Rise. Today, we launched the fourth of six Lagrangian floats and ran into a few problems. I, along with another person, released it into the water about 10am UTC; however, the float wouldn't sink. It just went away from the ship on the surface. After about 15 minutes, we decided to recover it (thinking that someone had miscalculated the ballast) because at nearly $40k per float, we can't just let it drift off without successful operation. We began to maneuver the ship as a few of donned float suits and ran around the outside decks trying to reach it with poles (and the crane in standby). As soon as we were about to grab the float, it hit a turbulence eddy from the ship and sank out of sight. So, fortunately for us, it finally was on its way (probably had water caught in its CTD and the pump finally purged it--these are designed to be neutrally buoyant, and the computer controls the ballast to maintain a level to follow the maximum isotherm about 150m deep). I have become quite proficient at launching weather balloons (twice a day) and will be helping to fly a kite (weather permitting) with a Rawinsonde to take profiles around the camp. Aside from all of this manual labor, I have the ice model working and operational generating forecast data that we are now working on getting into an ocean model to attempt to forecast locations in the region that may go unstable thermobarically. If we can predict such an event, we'll race the ship to that spot and begin taking measurements in earnest. This will be our group's (Drs. Harcourt, de Steur, and Powell) primary goal during the ice camp. The weather forecasts are showing another low pressure system about to hit which should bring some warmer temps, but with massive winds like last week (up to 60-70 knot gusts). It could make working out on the ice somewhat miserable. The hope is that it will quickly pass. The weather lately has been very nice with calm winds and temperatures around -12C, which really isn't cold at all with the correct gear. A new picture should get posted with this post showing sunrise over the ice. It is a wonderful picture taken be a PhD student from Norway. My work watch usually ends between midnight and 2am so I am not awake for sunrises, and I'm not sure I could capture that well with my camera. Hopefully, the next picture I submit will be me working with a penguin keeping a watchful eye.

8/2/05: We have completed our 3rd successful CTD cast today. I was beginning to believe that maybe we as oceanographers didn't really measure anything anymore after sailing over 65deg of longitude and 10deg of latitude without taking a single measurement. We are fully in the ice and the work shifts have begun. The winds have been bitterly fierce today, gusting over 70knots and sustained at over 40. By the way, a knot is simply nautical miles per hour and a nautical mile is one minute of latitude; hence, 60 nautical miles is one degree. 1 nautical mile is roughly 1.15 normal miles. Now you understand why we use metric for everything. The temperature has increased dramatically with this low pressure system (which has brought the extreme winds). We had been stuck around -17C ambient, and now are around 0C ambient. Of course, the wind chill is a little excessive right now. Launching the weather balloons has been a little trying in the wind. The GPS unit on the radiosondes is necessary to measure winds. Once it starts moving much, it doesn't keep a lock on the viewable satellites and won't measure wind. So, basically, when the winds are interesting (like now) and we want to measure them, the radiosonde moves too much and won't measure them. It seems only capable of measuring winds no more than 3 meters per second. Stupid thing. We'll keep standing in the wind, getting blown around the helicopter deck trying to get it to work right...

8/2/05: We have completed our 3rd successful CTD cast today. I was beginning to believe that maybe we as oceanographers didn't really measure anything anymore after sailing over 65deg of longitude and 10deg of latitude without taking a single measurement. We are fully in the ice and the work shifts have begun. The winds have been bitterly fierce today, gusting over 70knots and sustained at over 40. By the way, a knot is simply nautical miles per hour and a nautical mile is one minute of latitude; hence, 60 nautical miles is one degree. 1 nautical mile is roughly 1.15 normal miles. Now you understand why we use metric for everything. The temperature has increased dramatically with this low pressure system (which has brought the extreme winds). We had been stuck around -17C ambient, and now are around 0C ambient. Of course, the wind chill is a little excessive right now. Launching the weather balloons has been a little trying in the wind. The GPS unit on the radiosondes is necessary to measure winds. Once it starts moving much, it doesn't keep a lock on the viewable satellites and won't measure wind. So, basically, when the winds are interesting (like now) and we want to measure them, the radiosonde moves too much and won't measure them. It seems only capable of measuring winds no more than 3 meters per second. Stupid thing. We'll keep standing in the wind, getting blown around the helicopter deck trying to get it to work right...

8/1/05: As of late night July 30, we entered the region of sea ice and as of now, we are through the marginal ice zone into the full ice pack. The landscape is the most amazing, fantastical view I've ever seen. It is hard to believe that there is 4km of water underneath us as it looks like a massive field covered in snow as far as you can see. Icebergs stuck in the sea ice provide some visual contrast and appear as mountains on the land (see the newest image in images section of me on the bow of the ship with an iceberg in the background: With a white, cloudy sky, white, snowy ground, it makes it hard to capture any relief in the photograph). Last night, we launched a balloon (we are doing them twice a day) and the winds were about 25 m/s (roughly 45 mph) with a wind chill of -38C. Even so, we go outside (for up to 30 mins at a time) in just jeans and a parka and it is comfortable. Today, we are fogged in and the visibility is only about 1km. Occasionally, we pass a group of penguins or a sleeping seal, but they don't pay much attention to us. Supposedly once we make ice camp in a couple of weeks, the penguins will follow us around... Work has progressed nicely and things are about to get very busy. We had our first CTD drop yesterday as a test to measure the temperature, salinity, and O2 levels down to 700m. Starting tomorrow, we will be doing CTD casts every 10km for a week or so, 24 hours a day. Fortunately, my CTD watch is from 10am to 2pm. My modeling efforts are finally paying off with some decent output being generated. Hopefully, after 70 CTD's, I should have a nice representation of the mixed layer. During three of these CTD casts, we will be putting some Lagrangian moorings into the ice to take measurements and transmit them back until they fail in a few year's time. Along with the moorings and CTDs, we have a number of floats and Lagrangian drifters we'll be releasing into the water. So, in a week or so, we are going to be flooded with data and the modeling effort will reach an apex to try to predict what will happen next... Making 5-7 knots through the ice is incredibly loud; although, most cabins are quiet. Mine is not. Imagine a garbage dumpster outside your bedroom window. Now, allow yourself to believe a truck is lifting this dumpster for 24 hours a day. Finally, believe that the truck is constantly shaking the dumpster to get the last remnants out. That is the sound in my cabin of the ice breaking and sliding past continually.

7/28/05: Well, the Southern Ocean reared up and put us in our place with some heavy pitching on the ship last night that has continued for 24 hours now. I woke up full of energy, took a shower and after being tossed about, came out feeling a wee bit queasy. I've been eating most of the day, but keeping activities to a minimum as the constant 0.5 to 1.5g pitch does funny things to your insides. The enjoyable part is the stairs: one second, you are flying up them as though you are on the moon, the next struggling to make one step as Jupiter pulls you down. My bunkmate is out for the count as are several others. I'll put a patch on tonight and hopefully by the morning all will be adjusted. We should be arriving to the ice extent on Saturday, and things will begin to get interesting. The tedium of sailling to our objective is wearing and there isn't much to write about other than the stream of crap movies I've witnessed: Faceoff (every male character got kicked in the crotch), Captain Ron (Martin Short was never funny), Wild Wild West (steam spider!?!?!) , ugh. Once we hit the ice, we will be stopping every 10km for a CTD station to take measurements of the temperature, O2 content, and salinity down to 300m, pull the cage back onto the boat and move to the next one. We'll also be taking ice cores and doing meteorological tests (more red balloons). We are all itching to get off the boat and walk on the ice for something different.

Well, we finally began to see something in the water. Today, we passed through a large patch of pancake ice which looks as the name suggests. Hundreds of thousands of ice lillypads across the surface of the water. Amongst this ice, there were a few penguins and seals swimming about. About 15 miles to the south of us, you could see three massively huge icebergs towering at least 300 ft into the air. The water temperature seems to be constant now at about -1.8C which is prime for getting the formation of ice. Mmmmm.

7/27/05: Well, we finally turned SE to head toward the ice extent. Icebergs, whales, seals, etc. are all being spotted with regularity now. We passed the South Sandwich Islands about 20 minutes ago. Onboard, we have a fifth-grade school teacher from Oregon who is also updating a website about the cruise if you want to see what he has to say, it is at: Cruise Articles. His only job is to write about the cruise so he will explain more than I will have time to. Today is our first birthday on the ship, we'll see how well that goes...

Well, it is Monday afternoon and we are beginning our fifth day of sailing. Life on the ship has settled into a calm malaise while we wait to get to the ice (probably Friday sometime). Temperatures outside aren't too bad, around 0C. With the wind, it gets colder to about -12C; however, just an overcoat is plenty warm outside. Inside, we seem to be running out of things to occupy us other than our own work. The gym and movie lounge are about it. We are waiting for the designated party girl (Laura) to organize something for us. On a dry ship, her choices are limited. There was some sort of slight sewage backup today so I am avoiding particular areas...

Every time I turn around, it seems to be time to eat. I may gain 20lbs by the time I get back with all of this food and my body storing up for winter weight. The food isn't particularly great, but there is plenty of it. Lunches are essentially dinners; hence, we get two dinners plus breakfast, midnight meal, and snacks throughout every day. Yesterday's lunch was t-bone steak. That should yield some clues into the amount of food being thrown at us.

My modeling effort continues, and I am just making minor tweaks and utilities so that when we hit the ice, we can start the results without delay. I'm looking forward to getting to our drift station on the ice and walk around on something other than the ship and memorizing muster locations. Maybe play some soccer.

This will be my last entry for a few days as we are cruising in the open ocean toward our first destination point in the Weddell Sea at 10 knots (~11.5mph). We are 2k miles away so we are looking at just under 200 hours to get there. The biggest roll that I've noticed was slightly over 10deg, so it has been very calm. We haven't run into any storms. Basically, what I am saying is that nothing is happening.

We're scrambling to get our various modelling efforts integrated, coordinated, and consolidated. My tv channel seems to have come apart. The story behind it is that the tv's around the ship display various information on differing channels. One of the channels just had a computer desktop, so I was tracking down the computer to put a picture of my mug on the desktop so that whenever someone tuned to that channel they would see me: all brian, all the time. Yesterday, they switched the channel to prepare for relaying live CTD information. Alas. I haven't given up quite yet.

Life onboard is really not uncomfortable. They are constantly feeding us, the quarters are livable and large enough (I do keep hitting my head on the stupid top bunk though as I am in the bottom bunk).

I'll update you when we hit the ice in about 8 days or so.

UPDATE: We passed our first iceberg at about 6:30pm UTC. It was incredibly impressive even while a few miles away. Looks like a massive snow covered mountain just drifting along in the ocean. It was exciting to watch.