The journey goes on

March 11, 2017

We have been at sea for more than two weeks after our last port (Punta Arenas). We have visited South Georgia islands, passed by South Sandwich islands and are now at Bouvetoya. These are the three archipelagos/islands we visit – the rest of the journey will be through open waters.

We have experienced all kinds of weather, lived through a hell of a storm, had snow, hail, calmness;  saw icebregs (but no sea ice this leg). It has been busy. The other day I was working in my “office” on the 4th deck (with windows) and I was so busy I forgot to look outside. What a lousy meteorologists! Thanks to our ship’s photographer passing by and mentioning the light and the clouds – I quickly ran outside and snaped this picture:

I have to say my life only got more busy. On top of my usual daily routine of sampling CTDs and underway (which I now have great help from our new team member Alex)  and launching radiosondes and collecting atmospheric data …. So on top of all this I’m starting to fill out custom declarations for all our cargo to return to various labs and institutes in Europe and US. It’s a tedious  task, as I have a lot (and I mean A LOT) of equipment and just general STUFF. It was really useful to have all I need, but it will be a pain to locate and to pack. It also snowed quite a bit between South Georgia and South Sandwich islands, and I had to postpone my packing efforts to sample.

I also tried to collaborate with our photographer to get his help with macro-images of snowflakes, but it was not cold enough for snow flakes to last. As soon as we lit them with any kind of light they melted. So at the end of the day all our efforts resulted in wasted time.
I expressed my frustration with an interpretative dance catching snow flakes on slides on heli deck:

At lease I hope the slides I collected will be useful.

Now I need to input all my slides into the data base and pack all my snow equipment ASAP as more packing awaits. Wish me luck!!!

Thanks for reading,
Masha