Hello from Greymouth.

We are in Greymouth, NZ. Very warm and nice. Google it.

More this weekend.
R.J.

End of Act II Starting Act III

Here is our final look at Antarctica for this season. It is looking back at town from Pegasus Runway. The pointy hill just right of center is Ob. Hill which is right next to town.



Here is what most people were doing while we waited 20 minutes for the plane. Not the photo part, but the smiling part. It was a large happy bunch. Notice the fancy town here at Pegasus.



And finally it was here in sight. Our chance out of town.



This is only a tiny fraction of the 140 passengers that flew north.





Us at 9PM ready to go.



Me at 2AM ready to sleep. Notice something different in this photo? Darkness, and new concept to us.



And now today in the center of Christchurch. We got into the motel at about 4:30 AM. And finally about mid-morning we decided to go for a walk around town and enjoy the sights and see some green.







And on our way through town we stopped at the Botanical Gardens to enjoy the Rose Gardens. Paula has her way of enjoying them.



And I have mine.



So our next adventure has begun. It is very nice to be off of the ice, but it is tough to leave behind some of our new friends. We will be in Christchurch for three days to relax and get used to the real world again. And on Saturday we will hop into our rental car and head up the Eastern Coast and on Monday we will start the Able Tasmin Great Walk. Then on Wednesday of next week we will drive down the Western Coast through the mountains and wind our way back to Christchurch. We will be back here a week from Sunday.

Talk you everyone sometime soon.
And my next post will be as soon as possible, but it will depend on internet access.

R.J.

Condition 1; The take home edition.

Boy it is tough here in Antarctica today. The ship is offloaded, it is mostly reloaded with empty containers, it is 30F and the sun is out. I just found out that I have a two day weekend again, and then I have to come to work on Monday to clean out my tool box and my locker.


So the amount of work that I have left to accomplish in Antarctica is very limited.

Unlike the amount of work that others have to do:







Enjoy the snow!!!
R.J.
5 days left

What kind of Trash do you have?

So imagine yourself on a Tuesday night getting ready to take out the garbage so that you don’t have to get up at 4AM to beat the garbage truck. You have two cans to take out and then you have to drag out the 3 bins of recycling. That is a real bummer isn’t it.

QUIT WHINNING YOU CRY BABY! Look at what we have to go through to get rid of garbage.



This is the trash “bin” in our dorm. You first have to take a class before you can throw out any garbage, next you have to actually pay attention during class (another milestone for me), and finally you have to follow through on the new found wisdom from the class.

We have categories of trash here in MacTown:

Batteries
Aerosols
Fabric
Skua
Food Waste
Non-Recyclable
Mixed Paper
Plastic
Glass
Aluminum Cans
Burnables
Wood
Ferrous Metal
Non Ferrous Metal
Medical Waste
Cardboard

And likely a few more that I have forgotten since I went to garbage school. Now think back to the last thing that you threw away 20 minutes ago. What was it? What bin would you have thrown it in? Now are all of you starting to understand why Paula is the recycling queen? All of this thinking hurts. I just want a single garbage can, no decisions needed. I’ll gladly get up at 4AM to meet the truck!

Actually I am just whining for the sake of whining. The waste program in Antarctica has won awards for their recycling programs. If every town did what we do down here, landfills would be allot less prevalent. The only category that you see listed above that goes into a landfill is Non-Recyclable. And that is a very low percentage of our total garbage output.

But as you can imagine this whole process is a very labor intensive one. First there are the bins for disposal. The resident must take the time to sort their trash properly and dispose of it in the right bin. This is also true at all of the workplaces as well. Next the janitorial staff has to empty a dozen or so bins instead of taking out just “the garbage can”. There are dumpsters all around town for the different categories of waste. Most are strategically placed. There is a Medical Waste dumper outside Medical. We have a large Ferrous and Non-Ferrous metal bins outside the Heavy Shop. And again with many different types of bins they all must be collected and taken to the waste barn with a fork truck. Next at the waste barn is where the labor intensive part really begins. With the exception on Non-Recyclable, Medical Waste, and Food Waste every piece of garbage gets sorted and packaged for shipment back to the US. Plastics are sorted for the recycling types and compacted for sale upon return to the states, and all of the other categories are handled in the same way.

The only category that you might note recognize at first is Skua. A Skua is a native bird to the McMurdo area. It is a water bird that nests and lives in our area during the summer months. Think of a Sea Gull with a pissed off attitude, no fear of people, and they are protected by the Antarctica Treaty. It is a wonderful bird. If he/she decides to sit in the middle of the roadway you have to drive around them, and they are not easily intimidated. And did I mention that intimidating them is strictly forbidden in the Antarctica Treaty. (I want to be on the committee the next time the treaty is renegotiated).



So the Skua is a scavenger. Which is its one redeeming quality. They will sit on the roof of the galley and wait for some new person to walk out of the Galley with a plate of food in hand. The newbie will usually get about 10 steps and then WHAM! Plate of food is on the ground and the Skua is having dinner and any witnesses are having a great laugh at the expense of stupid people. But this is the premise of Skua in the waste system. It is the scavenging of good stuff and letting other people us it. Jamie would love this. Let’s say that you have worn holes in all of your T-shirts and you can’t find the time to get to Wal-Mart for some new ones. Well instead you go to Skua. Someone else’s trash is now your treasure. You can get cloths, books, small appliances, electronics, dishes, food that is still in the package, and many more gems.








So are you getting the idea of all of this now? It will be very convenient for me when we get off of the ice because I will just use the garbage can, and a few recycling bins that are around. But at the same time it will be sad because I know that this stuff usually can go to a better place.

8 days left.
R.J.

Welcome to Fall

Well I don't think it is ever offical, but I believe that it is now Fall in McMurdo. Last Wednesday it was 35F and sunny and warm, like it has been since Nov. 15th. And on Thurday it was 18F overcast and 30 mph winds. Quite a shift for one day. And it has remained below 20F since then. So since there are no leaves on the trees, and no trees for the leaves to be on I am going to declare it Fall. And since the winter season starts here in about 2 weeks, it will give us just enough time to get Fall in.

I was talking to a Winter Over Mechanic at the BBQ on Sat. night and his quote was " Winter can't start soon enough. I want all of these vacationers out of my town!" And those of us leaving before winter can't agree more. We are ready for green.

I have more photos of ships, but that has been used allot lately here. So I dug up some older photos that I had forgoten to post. These are from out trips to Cape Evans. The hut is called the Terra Nova Hut and it was the base camp for Robert Scott's expidition to the South Pole. He and about 20 other men spent 1911 and 1912 at this hut doing science experiments and preparing for their trip to the Pole.

And as a historical note, Robert Scott's trip to the Pole was successful in that they did make it to the South Pole, however they were beaten by the Norwegian group lead by Roald Amundsen by just a few days to be the first people to set foot at the South Pole. And on the return journey from the Pole Scott and all of his men were lost. His last entry into his journal was on March 29th 1912.

As you can see from the photos the hut is almost exactly as they left it back in 1912. Since there is nothing to decay it, almost all of the food and wildlife is still intact. Yes that is a real penguin on the table, and it is a pile of seal bluber stacked up in the front hallway.

It is an amazing display of history and I am very glad to have been able to see it several times.

10 days left!

R.J.

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.