Nathaniel B. Palmer

This is the Nathaniel B. Palmer. It is a research vessel that is part of the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs. It sails approximately 350 days a year doing various types of science in the Antarctic area. We got a tour of the upper deck on Tuesday with the rest of the town, and then on Wednesday the Heavy Shop recieved a tour of the lower deck, engine rooms, and the upper decks.



Did I mention that the Ice Pier is getting old? Thiis is a little more than a crack in your blacktop driveway.



This unit is one of the main science unit that will be used on the next cruise. It is a water collection unit that can collect samples and record a dizzying array of data on the water. It is attached to a 10,000 meter cable! 10,000 meters!!! That is like 6 miles!!!! All of the cable winches on the ship are very impressive.



Here is the main data collection room for the science. Paula knew what allot of this stuff was. I was dazzled by the shinny blinking lights. I didn't show here was the dry and wet labs on the ship. It is total modular so that they can quickly reconfigure the ship for different science groups for different cruises.



Here is the Galley. It can accomidate 70 people. That is the maximum crew allowed on the ship. And it is usually 1/3 ship hands, 1/3 Raytheon Polar Services people, and 1/3 scientist grantiees.



This is one of the cabins. Fairly nice for a working ship.



And here is the bridge. Well one of the side pods of the bridge.

The ship is powered by 4 CAT inline 12 cylinder powerplants. There are also 3 CAT 399 generators for electrical power on the ship. The 399's are the same as our powerplant here in McMurdo.

Each pair of engines feed into a gearbox that will turn one screw. This ship has two screws and they have variable pitch propellers. They can vary the speed and the direction of the vessel just by changing the prop angle. So there is no reverse for the motors, just a change in the prop.

In open water and very light ice breaking they will have one engine power each screw. When they need the extra horsepower for heavy ice breaking they will run both engines for each screw.

This is the gearbox on the back of two of the engines.

Here is the driveshaft to the screw. The section that you are looking at is about 40' long and it is another 40' long to the rear bulkhead.

This is our crew wandering around on the rear deck of the ship.

And on Wednesday morning the NBP left port and the Navy Tanker the Paul Buck came into port to start pumping off fuel. Myself and a few others from the heavy shop recieved a tour of the engine room of the Buck yesterday. I will post photos soon.

And Brian, since this photo was taken on Thursday morning, all of the ice has blown out of the harbor and it is open water now. So if you stand outside our room and watch for a few minutes you can see all of the whales surface for air. So there is allot of fish available.

11 days left. Time for me to go to the VMF BBQ.

R.J.