Cruise JC030
Monday 13th January 2009
Day 18 (I think) at Sea:
Here comes the snow........
JDAY 013
Lunch: well it's a la carte - I had a spicy bean burger
Dinner: Gammon!
Weather: Force 5/6 - quote bumpy at times.... hold on
Distance Travelled Today: 160 Miles
Total Distance Travelled: 2838 Miles
Activity: CTDing
Sea Temperature:0.3•C
Air Temperature:-4•C
Ok, well today we didn’t see much ice…. Why? Well it was too foggy and blizzard like. We could see it on radar but that was it! The morning started with a thick layer of snow on deck –broken only by the footprints of those scientists from the early morning watch who were brave enough to have a snowball fight at stupid o’clock in the morning.
By breakfast the snow lay a few inches deep in places and finally died down at midday. The barograph used for measuring atmospheric pressure dropped dramatically during the night indicating a depression – the satellite images showed that we were right on the edge of a big depression that was heading east. Tiny went out on deck and put rock-salt down to make sure no-one would be slipping and sliding!
The rest of the day was spent looking at one of our GPS systems that have been identified as being mischievous! Needless to say I spent another glorious day in the “Hobbit Space” – a low-ceilinged area under the bridge that contains the control unit for this system. This place is great fun especially when the ship is rocking! Anyway, eventually I recalibrated the system and it was once again behaving itself.
The evening was quite – the ship was rolling quite a bit whilst in transit to the next station. A few items in the labs and cabins fell off desk – but generally everything was ok. Some of the scientists were lucky enough to have some time off and I finally got sometime to myself and started watching Red Dwarf…… I especially like the comment about technicians – “Were technicians, we have zero promotion prospects – even the soup machine is higher ranking than us”
It would have been a nice early night except the deodorant bottle fell of the shelf and started rattling around in the sink at 2am – the “Lynx” effect or just the weather?
Above:Nearly off the scale!!
Above: This shows how much it dropped in just a few hours!
Above: A bit of snow!
Above: A lot of snow!!
Above: Tiny gritting the deck
Above: Deploying the CTD in the snow
Above: Deploying the CTD in the snow |