Cruise JC030
Friday 9th January 2009
Day 15 (I think) at Sea:
in the event of an emergancy......
JDAY 009
Lunch: well it's a la carte - I had a chicken tikka bugette
Dinner: Sweet and Sour Chicken MMMMMmmmmmmmmm
Weather: Flat calm!! nice and smooth!!
Distance Travelled Today: 129 Miles
Total Distance Travelled: 2231 Miles
Activity: CTDing
Sea Temperature:0.8•C
Air Temperature:-2•C
Above: sheldon under wraps....
Morning! Well today was really busy – but we have lots of great photographs to show for it! The weather has drastically improved – well it’s sunny! But it’s still bitterly cold! Without the cloud cover the nights are bitterly freezing but it’s still good to see blue skies!! We are still among the bergs although they seem to have thinned out quite a bit – we have seen some interesting shapes (some of which are detailed in the pictures below). There have been some truly massive tabular icebergs again. In the morning we saw some “brash ice”. Brash ice is accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2 meters across; the wreckage of other forms of ice. I took some nice pictures of this as it drifted by the ship…. See below!
I had lots of task to do first thing this morning but I got them done as early as possible – for some reason I woke up at 6 o’clock so by 9 I had a lot of my daily chores done! I’ve also been working on some guides to ship scientific systems for the scientists with some useful feedback from Sheldon! More about these again..
I spoke to the officers and they said it never actually got dark last night! The darkest it got was “twilight” and the moon just glanced over the horizon and then vanished again!
The main “highlight” of the day was our safety drills – one lot in the morning and another lot in the afternoon. As I said in my earlier blog we do an emergency drill each week. Today we had multiple drills – some for the crew and some for the scientists. Due to the harsh nature of the environment we are working in, the scientific party were given immersion suit training.
An immersion suit, or survival suit (or more specifically an immersion survival suit), is a special type of waterproof dry suit that protects the wearer from hypothermia from immersion in cold water, after abandoning a sinking or capsized vessel, especially in the open ocean. They usually have built-on feet (boots), and a hood, and either built-on gloves or watertight wrist seals.
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Due to the cold nature of the water we are working in (just above 0) the survival time is very short – statistics say roughly 15 minutes in this temperature before you are unconscious. The immersion suit drastically extends you survivability should you find yourself in the water!
An adult survival suit is often a large bulky one-size-fits-all design meant to fit a wide range of sizes (You will see this in a minute). It typically has large oversize booties and gloves built into the suit, which let the user quickly don it whilst fully clothed, and without having to remove shoes. It typically has a waterproof zipper up the front, and a face flap to seal water out around the neck and protect the wearer from ocean spray.
The integral gloves may be a thin waterproof non-insulated type to give the user greater dexterity during donning and evacuation, with a second insulating outer glove tethered to the sleeves to be worn while immersed. You will also see these “three fingered” gloves in a minute.
The drill was conducted in the main lounge under the watchful eye of Viv and Squibby
In addition to immersion suit training - Mark showed the scientific party the life rafts and how they are deployed in an emergency. Our lifeboats are our first choice in the unlikely event of abandoning the ship. However, if the lifeboats (for whatever reason) were unavailable then we have enough life rafts on either side of the ship for everyone.
Once the drill was over we began transiting to the next CTD site. A few of the CTD stations have now been dropped to “make-up” time. The distance between CTD stations is now about 90 miles which means much bigger breaks between deployments. A lot of the scientists took the opportunity to sit out in the sun – albeit out of the breeze which was still a bitter -3. The day was dazzlingly clear and we were treated to some “Cape Pigeons” which were flying around the ship.
In the evening we saw our first sunset for about 2 weeks!! The clouds didn’t extend all the way to the horizon so we saw the sun dip down and illuminate some of the icebergs! Luckily for us a big iceberg was going pass the ship just as the sun went down so we were treated to a glowing red berg which was in the shape of the Needles on the Isle of Wight – very impressive!
Being Friday and after quite a manic week I decided to have a drink in the bar whilst watching the icebergs drift passed – very nice!!
I received another email – this time forwarded by Sheldon!
Hi Sheldon
Happy New Year! Hope all is well on board.
I've had a quick browse through the cruise blog (there's a lot on
there) and wanted to say how fab the photos are. I think it's the
best set of cruise pics I've seen. All the images are crystal clear
and really well set-up with some great ones of the CTD and lots of
really good people shots (although the ones of Sinhue do scare me
slightly!). If they are all taken by Leighton then please tell him to
keep snapping.
Louise
PS Keep up the food reports too. For some weird reason I do like to
know what the daily menu is on the ships. |
Ok, that’s enough for one day – pictures!!
Above: Brash Ice!!
Above: More brash ice
Above: Norrrrriiiiiiiissssssss!!!!!!!
Above: Brash ice close-up
Above: Brash ice close-up. It was making a strange fizzing noise which sounded really strange!!
Above: View from my cabin
Above: it's not all excitement. The bubble vortex that we fitted in the constant temperature lab for Jan to use! This device removes bubbles from the water supply - kindly fitted by Above: Brash ice close-up Viv!
Above: a berg!
Above: A weird chunk of ice!
Above: first drill of the day! Everyone looks happy!!
Above: Mark explaining about liferafts which are in the plastic canisters to the right
Above: Mark explaining above the liferafts
Above: Scientists with their survival suits (in the bags) listen to Mark explain about getting into the liferafts
Above: whooops forgot to turn this one! Sheldon with his survival suit.
Above: Survival suits removed from their bags
Above: Anna, Jon, Sinhue, Mario and Jan get into their survival suits
Above: Anna, Jon and Sinhue
Above: Suit you Sir! Sheldon in his suit!
Above: Jon in his suit!
Above: Helen in her suit
Above: Sheldon, Anna, Jon and Sinhue
Above: Group picture of those who took part in the morning drill
Above: Sampling continues...
Above: Alan takes 5....
Above: brett enjoys the sunshine!!
Above: usual suspects!
Above: And again!
Above: it maybe sunny but jon shows how cold it actually is whilst taking this picture!!
Above: John has a read during the lull
Above: So does Anna!
Above: No comment! that's just scary!
Above: A weird berg!
Above: Another...
Above: crazy scientists!!
Above: brett and Arnaud go for an action shot!
Above: Phil!
Above: Aurelie
Above: Mark gives the second safety talk of the day to those who couldn't attend the first talk!
Above: getting into the survival suits!!
ABove: Paul and Loic!
Above: Karel!
Above: Phil
Above: Tango attack!
Above: Roisin lost in her "one-size" fits all suit
Above: Paul
Above:
Aurelie
Above: Roisin
Above: group shot for the second drill
Above: the crew conducted seperate drills whilst the scientists practiced with the immersion suits
Above: Starnge berg - for some reason i think the right bit looks like an owl....
Above: Another berg!
Above: Berg at sunset!!
Above: rain at sunset!
Above: Silouetted berg!
Above: berg at sunset!
Above: Karel in the sunset!
Above: Illuminated berg!
Above: Brett
Above Jon!
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