Noob Worker

Life on ship has been molding into a pretty regular schedule, except that we seem to cross a date line every two days. This means resetting the alarm every two days, waking up an hour earlier every two days, and just generally losing any concrete sense of time.  

My day is kind of like that of a hobbit (just not so lazy) and revolves around breakfast (first coffee), morning coffee break (second coffee), lunch (third coffee), afternoon coffee break (fourth coffee), and dinner (fifth coffee).  The coffee on ship is pretty good, the food is even better. We get served everything from a hamburger or sloppy joe to duck, lamb curry, or steak. I’m sorry Mom but I don’t think I’ve ever ate so consistently well gourmet in my entire life.

Our hours are eight to five, seven days a week, and work in the engine room is becoming more interesting. Three days ago we (us and the KP Engine Cadet, Kate) assembled a large metal cabinet and today was spent constructing a brace to secure the cabinet to a railing. This meant we spent the day cutting, drilling, grinding, and welding angle irons and using all the neat toys that vary from a drill press to a plasma cutter.

Engine Room

Conbro Working Hard

Exploring Crawl Spaces of Engine Room

Yesterday’s work was also interesting for me since I got to spend the day with the deck crew. The fuel oil tanks for the Peary need to be heated by steam as the temperature of the sea water drops to prevent the diesel from turning into jelly. “Turning on” the steam was supposed to be a relatively easy process that was assigned to myself and the pump man but we soon found that the bolts securing the spectacle valves were jammed solid from years of no use and exposure to weather on deck. (At first when the bolts wouldn’t turn I was worried that this was because of my lack of upper body strength…)

 By the end of the day the chief mate himself was out on deck in a harness hacking away at rusted U-bolts and improvising a “Portuguese Come-Along” while I wire-wheeled (aka cleaned) the bolts and valves back to life and went back and forth retrieving tools that were accidently dropped during the process (It sounds painless but when stepping over/crawling under a zillion pipes, it’s pretty annoying).

Spending a day on deck was kind of a relief from the loud engine room (hearing protection is required at all times), however it was notably colder. In fact, we passed our first ice burg at 4am today, it was a shame that I wasn’t awake to witness it.

We are in the “Screaming 60’s” now and have slowed down in hopes of avoiding a storm. (Screaming 60’s + Strom = Miserable Ship and Crew that is unable to sleep / potential sea sickness). It’s kind of funny when you notice that everyone just kind of automatically sways as they stand to adjust for the forever shifting direction of gravity while on board ship.

Beautiful Sunset from yesterday makes the Storm a bit hard to believe

The current ice conditions as we approach Antarctica are still uncertain, but as of now the ice haven’t opened up for easy sailing through a passage way that has been open for previous years; the Ice Pilot was hoping that this storm would help break the ice. We’ll find out in a few days when we reach real ice.

Satelite View Of Ice

The Star Represents McMurdo Station

You can see the passage way opening up to its left

Also this is a link the captain was showing us of a “live web cam feed” of McMurdo, it looks pretty pleasant right now. Find out soon.