Noob Photographer

We’ve crossed five time zones in ten days and we are in Zhulu time (Antarctic time that was put in place since the time zone spans decrease as you approach a pole so switching time zones becomes rather pointless, especially if you’re stationed at the South Pole Station).

An indicator that we are getting close is the “ice birds” that have been following our ship.  A few days ago I somehow managed to advance my clock two hours instead of one and found myself at breakfast an hour early. Here are some ice bird photos that I got to take that morning, and they were flying real close!

Bullet

Nice Birds Arse

Emo Bird

Like a G6

When looking through my pictures afterwards I noticed this irritating black dot smack dab in the middle of the above photo. To my surprise this is what I found when I zoomed in.

Albatross

An Albatross is a bird native to the Southern Ocean and is gigantic. While I spotted its wingspan from deck a few times it was too far away to get a photo of… or so I thought. DSLR WIN.

And then yesterday, I saw my first Iceberg (and some whales, no big deal (ha. ha.)).

Awesome Shelf

It was at least four kilometers away, and it is most definitely larger than our ship.  To give you an indication of its size….

I tried applying a blue tint filter on it with my camera to see what that’s like, and applied a fish eye effect to make it “sublime.” DSLR WIN.

BAM

Sully trying to get some zoom

By this morning, Icebergs were popping up all over the radar.

Radar

Real Life (Hell yeah Wide Angle)

The chief mate had us stand watch on bridge for two hours each this morning; I didn’t even try to count the number of icebergs in view. The icebergs we are seeing are for the most part glacial ice, and are classified as follows.

Glacial Ice

An example of each in real life

We’ve spotted more than a few cool ones now, including a titans recliner chair and boot.

Icy Recliner

Boot

Awesome colours (Unedited Photo)

Check out the natural ice

Not long until we start spotting penguins.

Ice Dead Ahead

That is if the Russians get here anytime soon. (Did I mention we're meeting up with a Russian ice breaker?)

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.

Noob Sailor

We have reached the “roaring 40’s”!

 I’ll explain, but I should back up my story a bit…. to the beginning.

I left Tokyo on January 5^th on Qantas Airlines for Perth, Australia with a layover in Sydney. I would complain about my 30 hours of travel (Qantas is a great airline, but it doesn’t help when your outfitted like a metal detectors wet dream steel toed boots and up), but I’ll refrain only because Conors’ story of 48+hours of travel with four layovers makes me seem like a whiney child in comparison.

But I made it to Australia, and I was happy. Let me show you why.

Room with Shower, Couch, Flat Screen, and Kitchen

Awesome Pool

(Photo Credit Conor)

The Resteraunt/Bar at the Hotel

(Photo Credit Conor)

We got to Australia on the evening of the sixth, and we didn’t have to board ship until 20:00 the next day. This meant that we got a day to explore Fremantle, where Maersk Peary was harbored.

First things first, that morning we went on a quest for Target because Conor, of all things, forgot to pack his underwear. Dumba** Classic. But we did get to explore the surroundings of our hotel and found a few funny things here and there.

Where's Bart Simpson?

(PCC)

The Australian Captain

(PCC)

Asian Scuba Diver

(PCC)

In the afternoon we ventured quite a bit further, crossing the bridge to the other side of Fremantle and making our way to Port Beach to enjoy some Aussi Beer and the best Mojito I’ve had to date.

Who knew going to Antarctica meant getting a tropical vacation?

Conor digs Australia

Park

(PCC)

Port Beach

(PCC)

Oh, and then we got back to the hotel for dinner, where Conor discovered that he had packed underwear before leaving New Jersey. Dumba** Classic.

But our unexpected tropical vacation had to come to an end, and we joined the crew of the Maersk Peary that night.

My room with my own head, couch, desk, and hatch

The wonderful view from my hatch

To clarify what the "wonderful view" is...

 green pipes

Photo taken the next day

(PCC)

The Maersk Peary currently has a 20+ crew, and to our pleasant surprise, there were two cadets from Kings Point on board. Our first day was spent filling out paperwork for the Master (aka Captain), running out to Fremantle again to buy an adaptor (why a ship built in Korea would have European outlets is beyond me), reporting to the Engine Room where we will be working for the most part, and going out to dinner with the KP cadets before the ship sailed away at 20:00.

Sailing out of port was enthralling, as the ship started to roll gently, and land disappeared behind us. That night, it was as if I was a baby being rocked to sleep, not that I had any idea what that was like since I’m sure we never had a rocking cradle…

Buh-bye Australia

(PCC)

Being out at sea is a wonderful thing, with a 360degree view of this.

The first two days of work were spent familiarizing ourselves with the Engine room, which meant tracing the various onboard systems. While schematics in textbooks make things seem logical and simple, when and you’re following a plain white pipe, intertwined with a hundred other plain white pipes, and they keep disappearing behind bulkheads and weaving up and down the four levels of the engine room (not including the stack), it gets pretty complicated.

Since graduating familiarization, we have been helping the rest of the engine crew in organizing the engine room. Being a recently bought ship, the engine room storage is a mess left behind by the previous crew. For us, this meant that sorting through thousands of nuts, bolts, and gaskets.

However, doing these tasks can be fairly fun. The sea’s have been getting rougher, which means the ship is rolling a lot more, especially since reaching the “roaring 40s.” (40 being the latitude) When sitting at dinner, it’s common for your chair to start sliding towards the salad bar while you’re still seated. This means that if you have a small tin can where a specific type of screw is supposed to go, and you try to drop it in, 3/5 times you’re going to miss. It’s a pretty fun game.

Even now I'm playing peek-a-boo with the ocean and the window next to me keeps shifting from full view of sea to full view of clouds....

Atleast the water's pretty

I can’t wait for the “screaming 60s.”

The Basics

WHY:     Webb Institute has a winter work program where all students work as an intern from January to the end of February. As a sophomore, we are required to go on Sea Term and work as cadets’ onboard ship for eight weeks. We also have to complete a Sea Term project, which isn’t a big deal……. (I wish).

HOW:    This Sea Term to Antarctica with Maersk Line was only possible with help from alumni, upperclassmen, the Admiral, the Dean, administrators, and incessant support from my parents. Webbies who’ve been to Antarctica in the past have gone on board USCG ice breakers, however this winter both ice breakers weren’t in operation. With support from Webb, we were able to get onboard the Maersk Peary, which is an ice class tanker contracted to operate between Thule Air Base, Greenland and McMurdo, Antarctica since this year.

THE SHIP:             The Maersk Peary was built in Korea in 2004 as Jutul, and was purchased by Maersk in 2011. The ship was rechristened on September 31^st, 2011, and this will be its first voyage into ice as a US flag ship. The Peary is an ice class tanker with a (now) baby blue hull, and while the ship cannot break ice, the onboard systems have specialized precautions necessary to operate in Antarctica.

THE ROUTE:        We boarded ship from Perth, Australia on January 7^th and have been at sea for three days now. We are scheduled to reach ice in less than a week, continue to make our way down to McMurdo Station, and return to Brisbane, Australia sometime in February. If time allows, we will continue on to Singapore and barely make it back in time for classes. I want to go to Singapore.