When the World Turns White

We are currently sitting still in a field of ice as we wait for the ice breaker to finish forming the ice channel which will allow us to proceed to McMurdo. There have been a few planning issues that have caused delay and some unpredicted complications such as the loss of internet and my zoom lens getting jammed (I’m sincerely upset…) but now that the internet is back and the seals are a lot closer, life is looking pretty good. In fact, since this afternoon I get to claim that I walked on ocean.

Life is brilliant.

Backing up the story------

Getting to McMurdo has involved breaking through sections of ice, sailing across a bit of Open Ocean, and then breaking through more ice (insert loop). If one morning the world has a shade of blinding white, the next morning you will wake up to the blue ocean. It’s a pretty disorienting, especially when you look up from your project to see the sun at high noon outside the window and find out its past midnight.

Two days ago we reached the beginning of the last stretch of ice, where we tested the Maersk Peary’s ice breaking capabilities. (The Peary is the lowest class ice vessel, capable of breaking through pancake ice on its own).

Some Engineers Waiting For The First Ice Collision

What We're Sailing Through

Bow Hitting That Ice

Pancake Ice

The sound of the hull colliding with the ice was initially quite horrifying, but like anything you kind of get used to it. Although it’s still rather disturbing if you’re working in the steering gear room and you hear the propeller making a sound eerily similar to a margarita blender.

The weather has been shifty as ever (it’s absolutely unpredictable), and it has reached -14 degrees Celsius. Walking without a face mask from the deck house to the bow is guaranteed to freeze your snot.

Since parking, the curious wild life has waddled over. We’ve been waiting for a killer whale to pop its head out from the many whale holes in the ice that surround our ship, but that has yet to happen.

Whale Hole

Yes, The Shadow is the Ships' Rail

I also saw the cutest thing I have ever witnessed. Fun Fact: Penguins Mate for life. 

!!!

We are also surrounded by some of the most stunning mountain ranges to be found (we are sailing along the coast line now).

Let's Go Skiing

Today, the ship put down the gangway so the crew could enjoy a much needed walk. The experience was absolutely magical and everyone was having fun. (although it was rather scary when you found your foot sinking a bit too far into the ice for your comfort….)

Star Fish

Insta-Snow Cones

Aft

Bow

 Just Some Big Diamonds

The wild life in Antarctica has no sense of fear for humans, this means they let you get pretty close. (However, touching wildlife in Antarctica is a big no-no. For this reason McMurdo apparently has a seagull problem, since you can’t scare them away.)

While everything is still up in the air, it  seems like we will be sitting here again tomorrow, and we will be taking a crew photo (featuring my banner…. Yay?).  The current schedule is to arrive at McMurdo in two days.

The Wild Things (Penguins, Birds, Seals, and the Russians)

The Antarctic Circle, is awesome. And I cannot stress the word awesome enough, what I mean is that everything is awe inspiring. Since the last time I posted, more than a few things have happened starting with a change of course.

We were seeing tons (literally) of Ice bergs and everything was cool (literally) until we managed to get in touch with the Russians. In previous years, the ice breaker was already at McMurdo and the idea was to get as close to McMurdo as possible before calling for the Ice Breaker for the final stretch. As it turns out, the ice breaker was behind us. Rather than navigate our way through dense ice on our own, the captain decided to pull a U-turn and follow the ice breaker through approximately 100km of thick ice.

Here are some photos from our second approach into ice.

Photo before I fell asleep at "sunset" (11pm, the sun doesn't set FYI)

By the time I woke up this morning, the world around us had changed.

Ice Evveerryyywhheerre

The Russian ice breaker we met up with is the Vladimir Ignatyuk.

An ice breaker is a specialized ship equipped with an ice breaking hull. The basic idea is to have an extended bow that weighs in to the ice to crush it. According to the ice pilot, the sound of an ice breaker in the antarctic is equivalent to that of a dinner bell... for the killer whales (since they get to go more inland (in-ice*?)).

The ice we are making our way through right now is relatively thin, although densely packed. Some parts of the ice have a brown tint, which comes from the algae trapped in the ice.

It hit home that we were in the Antarctic Circle when within an hour of starting my work day, we spotted a bunch of penguins, they are absolutely hilarious! (Waddle waddle waddle…)

panicked(?) penguins running away

waddle waddle waddle waddle waddle...

A closer look

closer look two

I can't look at a penguin without smiling.

By lunch time, we were sailing past more than a few seals.

lazy creature number one

lazy creature number two

just rolling around all day...until that Orca gets here

Some more wild life photos.

Headless Nick

Penguins checkign out cool boats

Loner Penguin

Twins 1

Twins 2

Twins 3

Bino

playing penguin spotter with binoculars

The weather in the Antarctic Circle has been constantly shifty.

Sunny! Pretty! Still not warm!

I spy the Russians....barely

Even when it is sunny outside, it’s hard to stay out for more than ten minutes at a time. The temperature is not so bad (about one degree Celsius), however, the wind chill is unbelievable. (Antarctica does live up to its reputation as an ice desert, especially at sea there is no wind blockage, and wind speed is at least 20knots at any given time.) Exposed skin cools your body really fast, and when taking photos  (big clumsy gloves make it hard to press tiny buttons) that means my hands start to freeze, making it difficult to stay outside for more than say two minutes at a time.

This means when I do have to leave the engine room (it’s getting cold even in there, that’s not supposed to happen, in fact we are trying to heat up our engine right now) I bundle up.

Antarctica is an ECA (Emission Control Area) where only high grade fuel can be used. The Maersk Peary operates on a low speed diesel engine which uses heavy fuel oil (HFO). However since HFO is environmentally unfriendly, Maersk Line Limited made the decision to switch to diesel, not just temporarily in Antarctica, but all the time. This doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s quite a challenge to switch a system used to, and meant to operate on HFO only to diesel in real life. Ideally, the ship would be reequipped with an entirely new system but that also doesn’t happen in real life. This “experiment” (a permanent switch hasn’t been done before to anyone’s knowledge(including the engine manufacture Man B&W)) has had a few issues, an example being the over-lubrication of the main engine. (The used lubricant is meant to react with a lot more sulfur, found in lower grade fuel).

This meant the third engineer, Ashly, and I have the pleasure of mixing our lube oil with sludge oil (a solution from our chief engineer). However, that piping system doesn’t exist. This meant we got to spend a few hours on the frigid deck using a homemade flange to improvise a system to effectively mix the oil. This was quite an unreal experience; we would be working in the wind and snow while gigantic ice bergs would casually float by in the background. It felt like a movie scene.

We’re also learning some other pretty cool stuff. Conor has taken it upon himself to learn how to use a lathe with the second engineer. Right now they are (jokingly) exploring the possibilities of machining a silencer.

Cool Hobby Bro

The Desgin

In the meantime the chief mate approached me about designing/painting a banner in memory of the Maersk Peary’s first voyage to McMurdo. (I doodled something on the white board which made him think I was “artsy” when I was bored in the engine room….)A crew photo is to be taken with this banner, and he wants to display it somewhere in the ship as a permanent memento. It’s time to see what can be produced on ship canvas with enamel paint (it’s meant for metal…. And was originally used to paint the ship).