What was: Day 56 - Leg 1 drawing to a close...
Leg 1 of the Amundsen trip is almost over. The crew change is in a few days, and other than myself and a few other scientists everyone on board will be leaving. This will be a pretty massive change...
But until then I still have pretty scenery to look at and science is always wanting attention. This is the back of the ship - I'm standing on the helideck looking out over the ice:
Currently we're breaking through some thin new ice -
Um, awesome?
I can't remember what it's called when the ice does that, but that stitches pattern happens when thin sheets of ice break apart and then come together in staggered, zig-zag layers. According to the sources of my sources, this might be called "fingering". Hopefully you get what I'm talking about. You could see it happen in small patterns, but its hard to imagine one that massive holding together.
The captain looks out for trouble.
And the third officer does...whatever the third officer does.
The ship is a delicate and specific machine. We can go slow, or we can go dead slow:
And finally one of my favorite shots from the trip - in McClintock Channel now, an area where very few ships have ever been:
2 comments:
When I was on the Oden the seals would have this habit of making themselves at home along the tracks the other icebreakers previously opened up (which we would often follow - easier to sail along a course that's already been icebroken previously, I suppose...) - just because they had access to open water, I guess. And then the seals would have to scatter and run away when we came plowing on by...
Did wildlife ever behave similarly that you observed? Not that you ever saw the lanes other ships (probably not many, if any) opened in them parts....
And with regard to the stitching (and yes, your spelling is wrong and needs another 't' - speaking of which I just noted that this comment box is automatically spell checked - how cool is that?) pattern in that one picture, my sources are telling me it's referred to as 'fingering' - does that ring any bells for you? They've also not seen it on such a large scale before.
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