12 June, 1992

Friday, 12 June, 1992:

Received a call from Tony Gow at 0135 hrs saying we would be going to an ice station in 1/2 hr. The station went well. I continued to do snow depths with Brett and snow pits with Vicky while Naomi worked with John on the survey and Preston and Tony did cores. We got off the ice at 0445. I'd love to sleep but as soon as the Palmer starts to move, I must be on ice observations. I got off ice observations at 0810 hrs and went to the lab to type in data I took last night and to work on E-mail for Ingrid. I have lots to write about but no time to write it. About 1000 hrs Vicky came in and wanted to know what I was doing. I told her, data entry. She said to get some sleep. We talked for a while; I told her that I wanted to do some salinities; she said go to sleep for the next ice station would be after 40 nm. I left, took a sauna and jaunt around the deck. No frost this time; temp must be -20 degrees. I took another sauna , shower and went to bed about 1230 hrs.

Got up at 1345 hrs, typed E-mail and worked on journal. We were still going to do an ice station but no one seems to know when; so I must go on ice observations at 1600 and got off at 1800 hrs and went to bed. Tony called at 1900 hrs to go on the ice. I got dressed and went to the wet lab but no one was there. I thought I had missed everyone. Ran to the bow. I met Tony there; he was ticked off over the delay on ice deployment. I don't blame him for our time is based solely on the durations of the CTD; so if we are delayed getting on the ice and the CTD is in the water, we are losing precious minutes. The station went well. This time we had a helper. Since we had not met any penguins while on the ice, Naomi, with the help of Herb, made a perfect replica of an Emperor penguin. When we deployed, Naomi and Brett had set the replica atop one of the hummocks that was in the dark. As we worked, it was obvious that someone from the ship spotted the "penguin" (for all search lights converged on that spot and the chatter on the radios increased ten-fold!). WE played dumb. Well done, Naomi! By the way, if you weren't aware of it already, along with being brilliant, hard working and athletic, Naomi is also an artist; and, I may add, a damn good one at that! Just ask the crew on the bridge. As I said, the station went well. There was only one real problem. When I tried to run a second 100 m line perpendicular to the first, I ran out of ice. It seems that the Palmer had zig zagged in and when I walked out from the ship, at 75 m, I walked right up to wide open water (the wake of the Palmer). Boy, was I surprised to see open ocean right in front of me! I pulled back very carefully and we ended up making a line of 50 m on one side of the first and 50 m on the other.