Hello Shroomery.
Well it's been a while. Two and a half months if you want to split hairs. A long and arduous fuck-off journey south, once again, by yours truly.
If you want really detailed and scientific write ups of what's been going on here, I'll post some links to those later for those that are interested in the science-side of things. I'm just a lowly crew member so I'm not really up to speed with the serious side of things.
Since a monumental administrative fuckup within P&O Australia, resulting in the loss of two offshore vessels from their fleet, the future of many of it's seagoing employees was left in the lurch. Many redundancies were offered and a few others just simply quit, as I'll explain later. Seeing as I was a casual employee, with no permanent work-roster assigned to me, I was not really even considered. I rang up the office after my last job on an offshore ship to find out when I would be going back down south. They told me that I was no longer needed due to their errors. Employment terminated.
So I was quite upset, having looked forward to heading to Antarctica again. So I assumed I was never to return. I rang up a fellow shipmate off the Antarctic vessel and found out what was going on, he informed me of what happened but also told me that he was intending to quit and if he did, he would pass on my number to take his place.
A few weeks later, just as I was running out of money and leave, the P&O office rang me asking if I would like to do a 9 week voyage back on the Aurora Australis (the Antarctic vessel) I happily obliged, although wary of the fact that it was a 9 week trip. The longest I've ever done at sea was 8 weeks and that was pretty torturous, and even then we could still get off in port. 9 weeks on the Antarctic vessel means 9 solid weeks in a floating tin can pushing through ice and being cold as fuck just about every other day.
Nonetheless I agreed to do it, and thanked the aforementioned fellow for putting my name forward. Was quite excited to be getting back on and heading south again.
The purpose of this voyage was Marine Science, or SIPEX-II to be precise (google it if you can be fucked). Sea-Ice-and-Physics-eXperiment-II. Basically a bunch of scientists from all over the world from vast backgrounds of Marine Science factions to study the behaviour and nature of Sea Ice around the Antarctic coast, also were some micro-geo-chemists, atmospheric scientists, krill & photoplankton biologists and a range of other schools of science I can't think of right now. In all a compliment of about 70 science personnel on board, along with us; the around-20 ships crew to help them.
After saying goodbye to my girlfriend and spending the last few days with her, which were hard knowing that I was to be away for a long time, we set sail about 10pm on the 14th of September. Leaving Hobart, Tasmania (Australia) and punching into the surprisingly calm and welcoming Southern Ocean. IT was about a week and a half before we started seeing ice. First it's just the occasional mammoth ice-berg ranging in size from that of a large house, other big broken-off chunks of glaciers as big as stadiums and beyond. After a day or two more the further south you go you start getting sea ice, which is a frozen layer of ice on top of the water, relatively thin and doesn't bother the ship too much, then you start getting into pack ice, which can be extremely thick, up to 6m, but we try to navigate through stuff about 1-3m thick. The ship makes light work of it, but the thicker it gets we have to back up and start ramming through it to break it. The ship is 'double skinned' and rated well for ice breaking.
The last survey that was done on this ship showed that it had held up really well over it's 23-year career so far, and a dry docking is planned mid next year to refit it and hope to get another 10 years service out of it. She's old, but comfortable, and a trusty workhorse with minimum problems in general running of things.
Once we got to our first 'ice station', the ship stopped, jammed in and parked up against a heavy floe of ice. Some Field Training Officers from the Australian Antarctic Division were first off onto the ice, a bit of ice 'floe' about 2m thick. Their jobs were to get onto the ice first, set up perimeters and safe zones that were certainly safe for people to be working and walking on. After a couple of hours of walking around putting up flags marking no-go zones (thinner, more dangerous ice) we would get off, start loading shipping containers onto the ice holding the science equipment and the scientists would start dragging their sleds out with all the necessary gear they needed to do whatever it is the fuck they do.Another job we would do is drill holes into the ice about 100m away from the ship, and drive pegs into it, and run mooring lines to the pegs so that the ship was effectively fastened to the floe.
After all this is done, then we would move and start gearing up the two helicopters we take down with us. One helicopter was fitted out with a range of sonar, radar and photography equipment (the camera alone, which was mounted on the underside of the helicopter, I heard cost $50k. It was used for the purpose of aerial photography, some of which I'll post later)
The other helicopter was purely a search & rescue helicopter. One helicopter is not allowed to fly more than 5 miles away from the ship unless there is another helicopter to accompany it (in the event of a crash) this is all due to a french crash that happened down there a couple of years ago where everyone died, and I think from memory they said the SAR helicopter crashed as well when they were looking for them afterwards.
ICe Station 1 was quite eventful. On the first night, some scientists and a couple of our crew were out on the ice at night time, about 10pm, and the ice started cracking up. About 3 people were stranded on a bit of floe that was slowly moving away from the ship. We went into rescue mode and all was sorted out quickly, an inflatable bridge was put over the crack and the people had to crawl back to safety. Noone was injured, unfortunately (this whole trip I've been wanting someone to fuck themselves up so we could go home earlier ha). Ice Station 1 was abandoned and we moved to find more suitable ice.
Basically the next 7 or so weeks are more or less the same. Everything happened like clockwork and I think in total we did about 8 or 9 ice stations. Each station ranging anywhere from 1-4 or 5 days. Maybe more, I dunno I stopped counting after a while. I have to apologise for the lack of photos of 'good' quality as I really wanted to push myself to raise the standard of my photos on my SLR, so the SLR photos are probably more arty than anything, and everything else is just (yes, I'm sorry) instagram shit off my phone. Nonetheless you should get a good idea of things.
The wildlife is always my favourite part. This trip I was lucky enough to come face to face with some Emperor Penguins, which I've never seen up close before. Usually we just get Adelie penguins. In hindsight, I think Adelie penguins are cooler THey are smaller but really cute, and have heaps of character. They're funny little things. Emperors are like twice the size, and have a slow staunch shuffle and a weirder sounding 'quack' that kind of sounds like some retarded trumpet. They are pretty inquisitive. They will come right up close to you but we aren't allowed to touch them, but if they touch you it's no big deal. At one time we had Adelie's and Emperors all waddling around our site, it's funny they don't seem too interested in one another. At one point a 'suit' of about 100 Adelies was jumping out of the water onto the ice, and a bunch of about 4 emperors were chilling on the ice right next to where they were coming out, but they didn't even flinch. Again, more footage later.
Also this trip we saw a few crab-eater seals. The first one I saw started shuffling right through our ice station. I have some footage of it I'll try and post later. It was obviously distressed, having come just out of winter and probably starving and trying to find a hole in the ice to get into so he could go and break his months-long fast. Shame that there was a hole that we had drilled for the ROV that he went straight past and didn't even see.
The coldest it got to down there that I saw was about -37 degrees celsius. Which is cold, especially with no humidity so it just stings the shit out of you. Your eyelashes freeze up (photo later) and your snot in your nose gets all ice and shit. It hurts to breathe. It hurts your eyes, and if you try and wear snow goggles they get fogged up no matter how hard you try to keep the heat from your breath getting to them. There were some pretty cool photos of some people with all their hair frozen but I didn't get them. After climatising to it all, it can be around -10, -15 and you can walk around in just your work overalls and not be too bothered unless you're in wind upwards of 15 knots.
Then the shit happened.
We were due to be home on the 5th of November. The Voyage Leader was pushing for us to get further South and West so they could 'study' the ice down there. They were told it was pretty risky seeing as the ice was so thick, nonetheless we started making way there and I think it was around ice station 7 or 8. Some pretty bad weather closed in and compacted a LOT of ice around the ship, meaning we were pretty well cemented. After about a week they decided to 'celebrate' by having a bbq on the ice, which was a cool novelty but I was pretty over it by this stage so just had a steak and stole a heap of beer and went to my cabin and got trolleyed.
After I think it was 10 days it was apparent we were going to be late home, so the captain decided that he was going to start smashing his way out no matter how hard it was. It took about 2 days to break the ship free of it's stuck position, and then it took another 3 days to move the ship 100m, in total it tok us about 10 days to break out. At about day 7 a 'lead' (cracks in the ice) started appearing about 800m ahead of us (they also use the choppers to do recon flights to assess the ice ahead of us for navigation purposes), after a few days it started widening up, and it took us 5 days to move the 500m to the water. We made it just in the nick of time as the winds changed and started closing it back up again. That was painfully slow and torturous, every day waking up and seeing that we hadn't moved hardly at all. The next day we got stuck again in a tiny little 'bottleneck' in a lead, that took a couple of days to break through as well. It's kind of worrying sometimes when the ship actualy gets stuck ON the ice, like is 'beached' and the ice under the water acts like a suction cup and holds the ship to it, and you will have to run the engines full astern and then full ahead to try and wriggle the ship off, you never know when it's going to happen, it could take hours or days, you never know. You just have to wait and pray.
The other thing that happened to is the couple of times we got stuck after our BIG stuck, the ice was drifting south, so we'd be steaming north, slowly, for about 13 miles, and then get stuck, and drift with the ice back south about 13 miles, so it was like getting stuck on a escalator. going nowhere. quite painful. (picture)
So after navigation through really thick ice, we were finally out of it and into the lighter sea ice, making better speed. By this time we were told we were going to be about 11 days late, which it has worked out so far, which costs the Australian Antarctic Division, the department that charters the ship for it's science purposes, untold fortunes, having to reschedule their entire season around the resupply of the Australian Antarctic bases (3 of them) and Macquarie Island. Also they have to take into consideration the ice conditions around a couple of the bases (as they are in 'bays) and if the ship can do barge transfers or has to use helicopters to take stores ashore for them.
So that's about it, really. We are currently about 100nm South of Tasmania. Due in tomorrow morning at 0700. I am paying off this thing on Saturday. 11 days late and feeling every minute of it. I spent my 25th birthday on here, which was celebrated by getting absolutely sideways. Also for the sake of relevance to you faggots, I took down about ¼ of weed (not enough), a bit of heroin, a bit of hash and only 2 bottles of spirits. The heroin, I started getting used to. Just sniffing little amounts and getting drunk. I got the nod a few times, I don't have much experience with it, but I really don't like the nausea. It was agood way to wind down but I don't really have a desire to do it again. Nothing will ever surpass K, which I'm HOPING to find before I have to go away again so I can K HOLE IN ANTARCTICA
I only brought the two bottles because the last marine science trip on here I did (no resupply) I took heaps of booze but didn't drink any of it because we were working 12 hour days constantly on a split roster so there wasn't really any time to socialise. THis trip was different, we were working 12, 13, sometimes16 hour days a lot of the time but in transit between stations there was a lot of downtime and time to drink so I came very unprepared. The engineers were getting desperate so they set up a still in the engine room and started brewing up some pretty filthy rocket fuel which tasted like heavy fuel oil but did the job in getting you spastic. Definitely need a lot of booze on here. But in saying that I did take some pretty good photos I think. I am quite pleased with a couple of them. This has turned into a 2 ½ month trip though and I am quite ready to go home.
Also while we were away a couple more people quit, so I got rostered on for two more trips this season. One to for the Casey/Davis Station resupplies and the other to Macquarie Island (south of New Zealand), which apparently is pretty badass as there are fucking huge emperor colonies there and some pretty good scenery), and from Macquarie Island there is a big chance I'll be taking the ship up to Singapore to deliver it to it's dry docking. So I'm glad I get to do a few more trips on here but I am getting really sick of being away and my girlfriend is finding it hard to cope so I think I'm gonna try and look at some other avenues of employment, the money here is great and the experiences are good but you often find yourself whittling away hours of loneliness and longing for loved ones and missing out on a lot of things like big events. TO put into perspective in the last 5 years I've spent every single birthday, christmas, new years (except lastyears which was a fizzier anyway), valentines, easters, just about anything you can think of, at sea. Not to mention countless festivals and stuff I've wanted to go to. It gets to you after a while, I think you have to be really cut out for a life at sea and I think it just isn't for me.
But, for now I am just looking forward to getting home to my girl, enjoying some red wine, chilling out, buying a new lens for my camera, paying off the rest of my debt and taking photos and again, chilling the fuck out. THis has been a really long trip and I'll be glad to get off.
Until I can think of anything else to add,
thanks for reading.
pics and links coming again soon
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