1 February, 2001

Incommunicado Feb 1st was a day to remember. So far everything was going well, we were settling into the routine of our shifts. Each day after lunch we had a lecture from one of the principle scientists regarding the work we are going to do on the cruise.

We have started a contest to see who could predict when we would see the first iceberg!

What happened at around 8:00 am took us all by surprise. I still remember the feeling that went through me when our lead scientist told us communication was down. All contact to the outside world was lost. Our only communication was through short wave radio. No e-mail, no fax, no phone. It was such an odd feeling to be in the middle of nowhere and realize that, as Amy (our lead scientist) said, we might be without communication to the outside world for the rest of the trip. What was I going to do???? I could only hope. A few days later Robbie and Fred (out tec support) made a short wave radio call to McMurdo, which was patched through to Denver. Slowly they tried to piece together what was wrong. At the end of the conversation there were no firm solutions but there were some ideas. Two days later they collected one e-mail address from each of us so they could send an emergency e-mail out to let people know we were ok. I sent mine to the web site in the hopes it would be posted so you would know about the situation. Since then we have figured out how to readjust the antennae when the ship is still and then we can transmit so from now on, we will be making e-mail stops every few days. Thanks for your patience out there.