21 September, 1994

9/21/94

-10 C / 30 knot winds

Third day on the ice!

Wow!

The snow and ice were VERY thick today! Martin suspects that this may be second year ice. The snow was well over I meter deep in spots and our core was 1 cm short of 3 METERS!!!! It took us over 3.5 hours to finish our work, and we helped the snow/ice team shovel out for drilling.

My days are now very full, but I'm feeling extremely satisfied. Overall, I guess that I really prefer to be busy and to feel like I have some purpose. My watch and ice observations last night were at 0200/0300 hrs. The ice, being so thick, is hard for the ship to break through. At one point during the watch the ship had to back up 11 times before it could break through!

Each morning, after the gym and breakfast, Stephanie and I go into the lab and work on salinity measurements and O18 sample preparation from yesterday's melted ice. That takes us up to lunch, after which we usually go out onto the ice for several hours. After dinner we go into the freezer with Martin and analyze our cores from the afternoon. We pretty much try to keep up with the work so as not to get a backlog.

Last night, after dinner, we passed the most amazing iceberg!. We were very close to it...within several hundred meters. It was nearly 2 Km long and 100 meters high. What a sight!!!