Hello blogwatchers. Well, I think it’s fair to say that tonight I have had an eye-opening experience of the power of nature.

We knew the winds were going to get up a bit as we headed out to the shelf break, but I definitely didn’t expect what was to follow. To whit: Violent Storm- and even Hurricane-force winds averaging over 60 knots (70 miles per hour) for 12 hours and gusting to over 80 knots (90 mph) during that period, massive swell, waves breaking over the stern and sides, and vibrations shuddering through the ship in tune to the sounds of flexing metal.

The view from the bridge last night was terrifying to a land-lubber like me. One moment we were pointing upwards into the sky, the next downwards into a flaming great big hole in the ocean, with everything else obscured by the wall of water crashing forward in our direction. Looking upward at tonnes of water as you steam downwards towards it is a disquieting experience when you are on the bridge, usually a good 20 metres above the waterline. The wind was so strong that the caps of each wave were vapourised and hurled towards us, freezing in the air and then pummelling the windows with frightening force. Venturing around the innards of the ship was like driving over hump-backed bridges in different directions every few seconds. While making coffee I could feel the floor of the officer’s bar flexing beneath my feet.

Funnily enough, the ship didn’t move about a huge amount more than in some of the not-quite-so-rough seas we experienced before. That was because the officers on the bridge kept the ship pointing permanently into the wind and waves, above other considerations, so that the stronger prow does all the wave-breaking and protects the weaker parts of the ship, like my cabin, from the force of the water. The ship has to be directed so that she is more stable and rocks back and forth (pitching) rather than from side to side (rolling); the larger length of the ship compared to its width averages out the effect of the waves a bit more. They had to put 3 megawatts of power into the drive-shaft to keep her heading at 3 knots into the waves, when in a calm sea 3MW would keep the ship steaming at a good 12 knots. Visibility was extremely limited and we were fortunate that there was no ice, land, or shallow uncharted waters around so that we could steam directly into the waves.

The ship is designed to withstand such forces, but the experience was extremely hair-raising nonetheless. I have to admit that I genuinely thought the game was up when the ship nose-dived at night into a few particularly big holes, as it seemed that when a few tonnes of water were dumped on the fo’c’sle that the elemental forces of nature simply must be too strong for any ship. Watching from the UIC as the waves rolled past and then broke over the aft deck was more frightening than any experience I have had before or any I wish to ever see again! Even a few experienced seafarers on board said that it was pretty rough, though most snorted with amusement at my lily-livered proclamations of fear.

Most importantly, I think we are going to have to re-think the surface boundary conditions in our model. And we didn’t get any CTDs done, in case you were wondering. Even the trusty salinometers were refusing to cooperate…

In the rest of this post I decided to show you some mildly scary pictures and videos, which underestimate the force of the waves because they were taken in the daytime when the wind had dropped (see graph). I found that it is impossible to capture rough seas in still photos. I can assure you that the night was a fair bit worse than this, particularly because no-one could see what was coming next. After the pictures I have also done a little weather analysis for the anoraks out there.

Video

Here is some footage that 3rd Officer Douglas took from the bridge in the morning (thanks Douglas). He was driving the ship with the other hand. You get the general impression from the starting point of the video:

Pictures

Here are some pictures of the ship (displacement approx. 6000 tonnes) being tossed around in the waves like a cat in a washing machine. I have tried to take pictures on a consecutive peak-and-trough pair so that you can see the motion but, well, you get the idea....

View from the bridge:

Looking backwards from the bridge:

View from the UIC:

Waves menacing the aft deck:

Analysis

Firstly, here was the weather forecast. If you don't know how to read a pressure chart then an introduction is given here. Basically the closer together the pressure contours are, the higher the wind speeds will be. If you can't tell the contours apart from each other, you are stuffed!

Next, I have plotted the wind speed and atmospheric pressure. Note that the wind speed is highest when the pressure drops. I was on watch from about 23:00 GMT on 4/12/07 until about 11:00 GMT on 5/12/07.

Here is the Beaufort Scale, which is used to measure wind force. As you will notice the winds were officially Violent Storm force on average rather than Hurricane force, but I can assure you that it was scary!

And here is an alternative scale that I prefer, courtesy of Mark Brandon. Note the psychological scale, and it only goes up to 10 on the Beaufort scale! However, it is designed for fishing smacks rather than big robust ships like the JCR.

• Most of us didn't mention this on our blogs until safely home for fear of scaring the relatives, but not Karel. Her blog is in Spanish though, so the secret was safe until she referred to 'El Hurricane'...

The one that got away remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Since my last entry we have been out to the shelf break and done a fair few CTDs out in the deeper water, including a few casts that featured polystyrene cups attached to the CTD in socks. This is an old 'outreach' trick to demonstrate the effect of ocean pressure to school kids - the cups go down the size of a coffee mug and after 3000 decibars or so of pressure come up looking like tiny rustic shot glasses.

After all that deep-ocean frivolity the cruise was basically finished so I was allowed to come off night watches and see daylight again. After my last watch I slept for 18 hours to celebrate, interrupted only by a 20-minute trip to the duty mess to eat a plate of 'German' sausage and Sauerkraut. At least I don't think that was a dream because Bobby George wasn't there.

However, we were not totally freed from our shackles because we had a few fairly large odds and ends to tie up before going home. We called in at BAS's Rothera base to do the 'last call' before the winterers are left to face the elements unaided until about November. This involved taking on a reasonable amount of 'gash' (rubbish) and collecting a consignment of thirsty builders who have been working hard all summer on a new building for the base. Here are some tasty photos I took on the way into Rothera:

We also had to use the JCR's big cranes to collect an oceanographic mooring which was nearby. Here are some photos of that. The big conical things are sediment traps, designed to catch the bits and pieces of wildlife as they sink through the water column.

It was a good day for photos all round, and got even better when a Minke whale turned up, attracted by the acoustic signals we were sending to the mooring to make it pop up to the surface after languishing underwater for a year.

After the extremely hard work of watching the crew doing that we needed to unwind, so we went for a short constitutional around the base before dinner. Conquering the north face of the 'point' gave panoramic views of the ship, the mountains, the base, and my pink nose. To liven things up I decided that the walk would be more fun if I posed as a Cossack dancer whose hot-air balloon had been blown off course over Krygystan.

After that mammoth expedition, lasting over 20 minutes, we were thankful to get back to the ship, which we had been missing terribly. That night we had the end-of-cruise dinner, which was a smart affair involving yet more wearing of the tie. However, this time the tie-sporting was combined with champagne and speeches. It was a bit like my wedding but without the mother-in-law jokes.

The next day we went for another stroll around the base. We saw lots of fur seals and a few Elephant seals. They were generally in a feisty mood and up for a rumble but luckily the Doc is well-experienced at scaring them off with his fearsome growling and stick-work. See how they cower. Shortly after we left they went back to their natural behaviour of clapping and balancing balls on their noses.

To give you an idea of the damage they inflict on each other in the name of land-ownership, have a look at these two bruisers leaking on a floe; reminds me of another mammalian species with power-sharing 'issues'. I did wait until they woke up to ensure that they were alive, in case you were worried.

And the day after that? Why, we went on a stroll around the base again. We were starting to realise why winterers start gnawing the runway and brandishing axes at the moon three days after the last ship has left. Actually I am exaggerating, because it was all fun; this time one of the field assistants kindly led us up the icy 'ramp' nearby and we had a very dignified ride in a Skidoo followed by a Queensbury-rules snowball fight.

After an enjoyable Easter break in Rothera and a couple of days of bar-swapping with the locals, we left for more adventure on the high seas. For the winterers this was presumably quite an important moment as it signified their severance from the wider world. The whole crowd came down to wave us off and clear out the backlog in their pyrotechnics cupboard. For god's sake look after our people.

However, the fun didn't end there. Our dauntless captain Graham was not content with following the well-trodden open-ocean path back to Stanley and instead decided that conditions were right for a swath-buckling sojourn through 'The Gullet', a not-often-used passage between islands. It held some of the most stunning sights of the trip (and hence my life) so far, with blue-tinged glacier-covered mountains rising vertiginously from a translucent and beautifully calm sea. The light wasn't great for photography but you get the gist from these:

Needless to say there were many camera memory cards filled up that day.

On the way out we saw some Humpback whales, which was nice. Apparently Lester recognised a Killer Whale as well, but I could only see a grey blur in the distance.

So that's it really. I am now steaming North and only a day away from Stanley, where I will rest a bit and get used to civilisation for a day before flying home to good old Britain. From the sound of the barbecue schedule it has been quite clement over there so I look forward to seeing something green again. All that remains is for me to say thanks for reading, and a paticular thank-you to the UK taxpayers out there for funding the cruise.

PS: It has come to my attention that I am being mocked by certain malevolent elements out there in blogland. Probably a bunch of pasty land-lubbers who don't know their bilge-pump from their cratch. I can assure you that I will do everything in my power to have the perpetrators downgraded to bottle-washing if they ever set foot on an Antarctic research cruise. So there.

A grand day out remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We are now heading north to do some work on the shelf break, which is where the generally-shallow (~500m depth) continental shelf seas sharply deepen to become the abyssal ocean (~4km depth). In the last few days the wind has got up, and last night we were rolling quite violently. Despite being pretty heavy (man), my chair was sliding across the room with me in it and had to be lashed down whenever I got bored of the ride and went for a cup of tea. While processing salts I had to cling to my beloved salinometer to avoid being flung across the room and dashed against the salt-cured remains of Ph.D. students who had perished at the salt-face on previous cruises.

A couple of days ago the night watch had the honour of doing the cruise's 200th CTD, which fortuitously came up just before breakfast. This meant that we were able to sample the ceremonial bottle of Bailey's (enjoyed by the day watch as a tot in afternoon cocoa after CTD 100) without affecting our high standards of performance. Technically it probably should have been the paint-stripping Rum they use to degrease the bilges but Deb has a cultured palate. Karel expertly filmed Fruchtzwerg (don't ask) and I taking the 200th set of salt samples, but the footage is too large to upload so you'll have to wait until Cannes.

The really good bit about being near the land is that there are mountains to look at, and they are slightly different shades of white and grey to those we are used to. I bet some of the snowboaders out there would like to risk the use of their prosthetic joints on these...

Blocking our path to the ice front (the seaward edge of the ice shelf) was a certain amount of fast sea ice (ice stuck to the land that is, not ice that proposes a joint account before the main course is finished), so we went as close as we could through the loose floes. I had trouble sleeping one afternoon and got up to discover that my shipmates were doing an ice station in a beautiful winter wonderland of ice and mountains. I stopped watching when the Chief Officer informed the ice party over the radio that their floe had a 'small' crack in which was nothing to worry about, though heading in their direction...




Later on the sky became electrified in a strange phenomenon previously unseen by humankind. My theory that it was some kind of phosphorescence caused by Albatrosses regurgitating Electric Eels while in mid-flight will be presented at the CLXIIth Symposium of the Cambridge Philosophical Society upon my return.

When morning came, there was a lovely berg to look at in front of some mountains exhibiting 'Alpine glow', a pseudonym for ski rash. Although those pesky clouds are obscuring the summits this is probably the best of the 20 near-identical dodgy pictures I took of it.

Finally, after a hard day's night, what could be more welcome than an early-morning flop in one of the bar's ultimate easy-chairs? Note the strict separation between coffee-side and beer-side; if this quarantining is maintained I can tell what time it is by which hand is in charge of the drinking procedure.

The only problem is accurately judging the centre of (original) gravity of your pint when the ship is rolling. How close do you think this one is to toppling?

The Madness of King George remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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It has all been a bit of a blur since I last wrote, with highlights sprinkled liberally within the daily routine of salt processing, CTD driving, salt processing, writing computer programs, salt processing, sitting in the bar, and salt processing. Luckily, every so often I remembered to look out of the window (salt processing) or get my camera out (salt processing) and as a result I now have something to write about other than salt processing. Did I mention salt processing? I could talk about that too, but only if you fax through signed disclaimers attesting that any injuries caused by the ensuing excitement are not the responsibility of me, BAS, or Shopsoiled Salinometers Inc. of Neasden. I would characterise that last sentence as medium to gratuitous irony.

I think it's fair to say that we have done a small mountain of CTDs since my last entry (current cruise total is 161) so we will now know more about a few sections of ocean. In the last couple of days it has been a little choppy on occasion, shall we say, and I have not been having the best days' sleep; at their peak the bags under my eyes were so large that I was worried about getting them through customs at Brize Norton in a few weeks' time. As a result of sleeping lightly I have been having some literally fantastic dreams, including one in which gravelly-voiced cockney darts player Bobby George came round to give me a Christmas present which I then had to pretend to like in case he took offence. Psychoanalyses on the back of a postcard please.

It would be churlish of me to say that I have not enjoyed it, and looking back through my photos makes me think what a lucky almost-middle-aged person I am indeed. I’m not sure that that would be the impression received by my brave cohorts on the night shift, who have to put up with my incessant whining about how it is better to dry the plates anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and why the ship would be better if it were run by a supercomputer called Boris5000 and things like that. See what you can glean from their blogs and then report back to me: here and here. Actually I really do recommend you take a look as they are both more capable than me in general, and blogging is no exception.

Since there is far too much material even for me to write up here, I will guide you lovingly through the minutiae of my life in chronological note form using bold font. If days are missing that means that I was doing lots of work and/or the sky, ice, sea, and wildlife were all different shades of grey such that they were topologically indistinguishable from a duty-mess tea-towel. If, for some strange reason, you want to know more, then you will have to wait for the DVD with the deleted scenes and the commentary. Readers with meaningful lives to attend to should probably look away now. Toodle-oo.

13/03/07
Big Ted scribbles down a last Will and Testament before going into the freezer to cut up his ice cores. That involves the combined dangers of cold, band-saw, and Ted, so we have to check he's still alive and un-mutilated every half hour or so. So far he is OK but it's only a matter of time...

14/03/07
I went on an unforgettable ice station. As we were lowered over the side in the 'Wor Geordie', a rope cage used for dumping excess scientists onto the ice, a little Adelie Penguin came over and started looking cute. As we manfully got on with hacking the ice to pieces, three Emperor Penguins came over too and stood by us curiously as we worked. They were only a few metres away and it was quite an experience. I didn't take my camera with me so I'll extract some photos for a future post, but in the meantime you can tell from these dark blobs how close we were. I am the person in the middle standing near the three Emperors. The Adelie is on the far right. The other Penguin-like thing in the foreground to my left is (Cook) Glen's toy Penguin mascot!

Also, this is what the scenery looked like:

15/03/07
I saw an iceberg. With a rainbow near it.

16/03/07
It was a little parky in the UIC. The first time I have ever attempted to program a computer with gloves on. Needless to say the result was very similar to Shakespeare.

17/03/07
Another ice station, this time at night. It was snowing and we were illuminated by the super-spotlights from the ship, so the effect was a little like Christmas except plus cold fingers and minus Rum butter. Another stunning experience.

19/03/07
Five or six Minke Whales came to see what we were up to while we were stopped in a 'pool' (gap in the ice) to do a CTD. It's hard to imagine what they thought of all the acoustic signals coming out of the ship and CTD; it probably sounded like George Formby to them or something. They swam around a bit and exhaled a lot before going away. What nice creatures they are, unless you are Krill.

20/03/07
At the end of my watch, the morning sea was filled with frazil ice as far as the eye could see. Alert readers will recall that frazil is tiny crystals of ice which forms in a mixed fluid when it is cooled to below the freezing point. The slush on the surface effectively increases the viscosity of the water, making it look very silky and amazing.

23/03/07
We were breaking ice all night and the poor folks on the bridge had a hard time of it. We went up to see them and were amazed at what they are asked to do. They had to steer through tight sea ice and bergs in a howling blizzard with only their Owl-like night vision and 3 super-spotlights to guide them. Amazing. The spotlights are moved electronically so they jerk from place to place like the Eye of Sauron.

24/03/07
I awoke to discover that were were doing an ice station in an area of bright brown sea! Between floes was copious quantities of algae happily growing away. The ice was also blueish in places, which is where it has been flooded with seawater.

29/03/07
After losing all sight of the sun to clouds and daylight-shifting for a few days, it was a very welcome sight when it returned. Here is an example taken through the bulrush-like aerials on the Monkey Island.

Also, after several days of rough seas and low temperatures the Fo'c'sle (Forecastle) was sheathed in ice and quite surreal. Here are some pics of that:

Finally, here is a picture of me doing what I do best, processing salt samples in the 'salt mine'. Check out that two-handed action! I think I will have learnt how to do it after a few hundred more crates.

Return to the fold remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I have just learnt that I will be out of the satellite footprint for a while, which means that my umbilical link to the internet (and hence voice-over-IP telephone) will be broken. I should have some kind of temporary email address through a different system, which I will email a lucky subset of you from when/if I get it. Also, I will still be able to phone through Iridium, a commercial satellite system, but that costs a fortune and cannot be done from my cabin so it will be limited to neanderthal grunting at spouse only!

It will probably be a fortnight or so until I blog again. Until then, I thought I wold post some pics of the 'pancake ice' we have been swishing through all day. When a turbulent body of water is cooled to below its freezing point, tiny crystals of ice, called 'frazil' form. The frazil crystals stick together to form 'pancakes', which have raised edges because they bash together under the action of the waves:

Eventually, the pancakes stick together to form larger pancakes:

and so on until fully-fledged floes are formed.

Combine these things with the rest of nature and you start to go weak at the knees. Have a look, it's nice:

That's it for now. While away, I will probably look stupid most of the time. For example, photographing the sunrise at -20C makes me look like an evil goblin:

Au revoir.

Pancake Day remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello. While switching my body’s battered internal timepiece from the old-style day shift (1200-0000) to our new-and-improved night shift (2000-0800), I have a short period of ‘spare’ time. This is unheard of on ship, and I was planning on having a lovely time up on the Monkey Island capturing gigabytes-worth of pixels in different shades of white for you to enjoy later. However, Madame Nature has once again thwarted my plans by producing an acrid grey fog of the purest Antarctic lint, so my trusty sidekick Mr. Canon has gone to bed in a huff. Thus, I am now confined to my cabin with a warm laptop and the acorn of a plan for (shock! horror!) an afternoon nap. If that got out around the ship I would probably be run up the foremast for relaxing too much. Before I turn in, I thought I might spend some time on a blog entry that I have planned for a while, viz. a quick tour of the scientific measurements that we are here to make. The aim is to tell you briefly what we measure, not why we are here measuring it – that will have to be saved for another year.

Obviously I am biased, but it seems to me that our knowledge of the oceans is not in as good a state as perhaps it might be. I once heard ocean-data kingpin Sydney Levitus mention that, while we know the surface topography of Mars to an accuracy of 1 metre (vertical) everywhere on a 1-kilometre grid (horizontal), there are areas of the world ocean up to 500 square kilometres in area that have never been surveyed by a ship at all. This means that there are large areas of the only planet we’ve got where we don’t have even the most basic information on what the sea bed looks like, let alone what the currents are doing, etc. When you consider that the oceans carry the majority of the heat, mass, and momentum in the climate system, that lack of information becomes a climate-predicting problem for humankind as a whole.

As a small example, have a look at this photo of the output from the bridge’s navigational equipment. We are the red dot in the middle of the screen, apparently floating above Charcot Island! Obviously, the chart is wrong. Unless this is like The Sixth Sense or something, but I can’t see Bruce Willis hanging around anywhere (though Binns our winch-driver is probably a reasonable approximation).

The JCR is a Destroyer in the war against lack of oceanographic knowledge, bristling with the (almost) latest weapons in the scientists’ arsenal. In the rest of this entry I will briefly list only the ones we are using; obviously, there are many many many (many^3) other devices that could be deployed, and lots of them are sitting around in pieces somewhere on the ship. I will arbitrarily divide the instruments into CTD-borne and ship-mounted kit. We are also doing sea-ice work, of course, but that’s another story. If you want to know more about any aspect of oceanography then this page is always a good bet.

CTD-borne

Snow Petrel-eyed readers will remember that the CTD is the piece of kit that we lower over the side of the ship on a winch. Worship and cringe ye savages as the horned CTD god is lowered into the smoking fiery pit that the southern ocean becomes at sunrise when the air temperature is –20C:

And here are some slightly more sensible pictures of it :


The metallic bits at the bottom are the sensors and the grey bottles are for sampling. We run the thing all the way down to (hopefully not quite) the bottom and then back up again, recording data continuously all the way. This is what it measures:

Pressure (D): we use pressure (the force arising from the weight of water above the sensor) to determine the depth that the CTD is at, using some mystical knowledge of the ocean properties.

Temperature (T): Astoundingly, we use thermometers to measure temperature. Once again BAS is at the forefront of global scientific developments. We also calibrate the continuous temperature recording by taking very-high-precision readings at selected depths using a different sensor.

Conductivity (C): We measure the electrical conductivity of the water. This is a function of, amongst other things, the salinity of the water, so we use it to derive that. In the polar oceans salinity variations usually have the biggest impact on the density of the water, which drives the flow, so it is important.

Dissolved Oxygen: We measure the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. It gives us a rough idea of the amount of time since a given bit of water was near the surface and tells us about what the wildlife are up to, apparently.

Flourescence: A UV light is shined through the water and the fluorescence produced is measured. This is related to the concentration of phytoplankton (microscopic plants, basically green slime) that the water contains.

Transmissivity: A light is shined through a section of the water and the amount reaching the other side is measured. This gives us an idea of how clear the water is, revealing its murkiness or otherwise as a result of floating particles etc.

Altimetry: The CTD has a downward-firing echo-sounder to make sure we are aware that it is about to crash into the sea bed. That would be more expensive than crashing a Ferrari and therefore a career-limiting move.

Water Sampling: The 12 grey bottles in the sensible photo above are called Niskin bottles (after a famous oceanographer’s cat) and stay open as the CTD is lowered or raised through the water until, at chosen depths, we press a button on our computer that snaps the lids shut. This traps the water inside, and it is brought kicking and screaming to the surface to be poked and prodded by us scientists. This is what we measure:
Salinity: Measured to calibrate the continuous conductivity readings. By far the biggest source of pain for novice cruise monkeys like me as it has to be bottled (cold fingers) and then fed into the hungry salinometer (dulled brain).
Dissolved Oxygen: Again, measured to calibrate the continuous reading. Yawn.
Oxygen-18: Aha! An interesting one. The samples we take are sent away to some laboratory or other, where they measure Oxygen isotopes. These isotopes are affected by evaporation and subsequent precipitation (snow or rain), so that glacial ice has a different signature to seawater. Therefore, we can use these measurements to get an idea of how much glacial meltwater is in each bit of seawater.

Ship-Mounted

Acoustic Echo-Sounder: Measures the depth of the ocean by firing a burst of sound downwards (a ping) and then listening out for its echo as it bounces back off the sea bed. The depth is then derived by combining the time taken for the echo to return and knowledge of the speed of sound in seawater (mystical again). Witness the depth increase suddenly as we change from shelf-seas to the deep ocean:

Multi-beam Swath Echo-Sounder: The suave older cousin of the above. Uses an array of instruments to fire and receive each ping in such a way that, for every ship position, the depth can be determined at a line of points perpendicular to (across) the path of the ship. This means that for every ship position, a line of depth-soundings are taken (running Port-Starboard). If the ship is moving, this results in a 2-dimensional map of the sea floor and lots of pretty colour plots.

Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP): Used to measure ocean currents beneath the ship. It transmits high-frequency acoustic signals that are scattered back by bits and pieces in the water. It then estimates ocean velocity at each depth by using the Doppler effect to measure the radial relative velocity between the instrument and scatterers in the ocean.

GPS and navigational systems: The ship has many positional and navigational systems to tell where it is and where it’s going, but it’s not quite that simple. The acoustic systems mentioned above also need to remove the pitch, roll, and heave from their data and all of the above need to remove the average movement of the ship too. Cue the techy (usually) men in white coats and spectacles.

Underway Meteorological and Oceanographical systems: The air temperature, relative humidity, and solar radiation are recorded continuously from the foremast of the ship. The ocean’s temperature, salinity, and flourescence are recorded continuously by a sampling device that sucks water from underneath the ship (6 metres depth). When it’s not frozen solid.

That’s the end of the list. I have tried to write the entry in lay-person’s language but I’m sure that confusions and inaccuracies remain, despite the sage advice of wizened seafarer Mark Brandon on a number of matters. Any errors that remain are entirely the responsibility of the British education system and my slow internet connection. No correspondence on subjects I know nothing about will be entered into.

• The data purists out there will note with glee that the definition of science in the title does not explicitly include modelling. Discuss.

Visions in the mist remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The shift definitely has its benefits though; for starters everything is quieter so it is possible to get more work done, and for seconders you have a legitimate excuse to go to the bar at 8 o'clock in the morning immediately after a cooked breakfast! The latter is a very strange experience.

The best thing of all, though, is being up to watch the sunrise. Today's was a particularly good one, as we were steaming through some heavy sea ice with lots of tasty bergs in, so I thought I would share it with you all. Disappointingly, the photos are particularly bad, but you get the general idea.

It is astonishing how many different forms ice can take when subjected to various melting and freezing processes. Anyway, I'd better be off to the bar because it's 10am and past my bedtime...

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Hello bloglings. My eyes are opened wider and wider every day by what we are up to down here, and I have many treats waiting for you in my brain, oh yes. However, I thought that these events were probably worth a special entry and some late-night uploading. One of our aims while we are down here is Ted Maksym’s master plan to collect some data on sea ice, and yes, it just so happened that conditions were suitable; crucially, Deb very kindly agreed to forego some important CTD time. Lo and behold, the opportunity presented itself for me to go and stand on some Antarctic sea ice and start attacking the stuff with a shovel, corer, drill, saw, etc. A rare honour indeed and one for which I will ever be thankful. So I donned a boating suit and all the safety gear I could think of (including a spare hankie and 10p for a phone call) and set off.

The story is probably best told in photos. Actually it is probably best told in jewelled Haikus embossed in gold leaf with extra cherubs, but there’s no time for that, so I will shortly hand over to Mr. Canon. Note that I wouldn’t advise you to try any of this on the river Cam, at least not without Povl Abrahamsen standing by in his rescue kayak with a thermos full of rescue-cocoa. As you will see, we were kitted out properly and had a boat waiting with the engine running at all times and three rescuers poised to snatch our still-warm remains from the brine or seal’s mouth at any moment. We were safe, alright mum?

This is what we were looking for. Nice thick sea ice to core with seal tracks all over it, proving that it is strong enough to hold several times our weight.

I thought that if I put it all on at once, then whatever happened I’d be safe. Forgot about heatstroke though…

We got in one of the boats and were lowered over the side. Had a little trouble starting the engine in the cold. Also, someone forgot to turn off the water outlet on the ship…

There’s some! Says Ted.

No, that’s already occupied. The Crabeater seal was mildly annoyed that we interrupted his afternoon bask.

So we went round the other side of the ship. She’s a beauty, especially when she’s the difference between a sauna and a cold bath.

A tasty-looking floe appeared so we unloaded. Unfortunately there were no bullion under the giant X so we had to settle for ice coring. Yawn.

Coring the ice has to be done by hand (or we would just drill the corer into the ice and lose it) and it’s damn hard work, particularly when your main criteria for choosing the floe is that it be the toughest ice possible to stand on. With all those clothes on we were roasting after about 2 minutes.

We weren’t the first scientists here. Beaten by the Penguin Expeditionary Survey again.

Lester wins the award for vigilance in the face of extreme cold (they were sitting still watching us for over 2 hours). Note his specially-adapted safety beard.

I was there too, in case you were doubtful.

Ted attains nirvana with one 3-metre ice core recovered plus lots of ice and snow samples and observations.

As it says in the BAS brochures, we left nothing behind but our (Carbon) footprints.

Wow, what a stunning time. We were there and back in 3 hours, just in time for fish Thai curry in the duty mess… and the remaining 5 hours of our watch.

Since I first wrote this Ted has done a couple more sites, but this time with other, more capable, assistants. Also, he has subsequently used the ‘Geordie’, which is a rope cage lowered over the side of the ship. We only used the boat because were were in relatively open waters, whereas now we have hit some areas of heavier pack ice.

Anyway, back to work. I am switching to 8pm-8am shifts so will probably get even less coherent from now on. Bye.

On thin ice remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Hello all. Apologies for the delays but I have been unable to connect to the internet for a while because of a rather unusual reason – icebergs! Yes, I woke up on 3/3/07 feeling pleased with myself for sleeping so long after a lie-in (up at 10:30 for another 12-hour watch starting at noon) and opened my blackout blind to find that I’d been innocently snoozing through the amazing vision of bloody great big lumps of ice the size of very large things indeed floating past my porthole. The only problem is that they block the satellite signal to my precious internet, i.e no email and no blog. However, since you are reading this, that must have stopped at some point.

So basically I woke to see the rocky mountaintops of Alexander Island at the far end of a stunning view with icebergs and sea ice in the foreground. The surprising thing is the different forms that these ice masses can take – you name it, they look like it. I even found one that looked like the Mandelbrot set riding side-saddle on the back of a Thompson’s Gazelle, but I had left my camera behind at the time.

I was unable to spend all day snapping the bergs because we have now started doing CTD stations in earnest. It is a fair old piece of work with lots of critical things to remember, and it took us a while to pin down, but I think our watch is probably now capable of doing the job unsupervised by the ever-vigilant Deb. It’s particularly hard to do these things when tired, but this is less of a problem because the ice on the surface damps the waves very effectively (hopefully you will remember from my last entry that pitching and rolling around in the waves makes us tired). We managed 6 CTD stations before the sea ice got too prevalent for the ship (at about 2300, i.e. 1 hour from the end of my watch) and we had to turn north to head for less icy waters.

The pictures that follow do not do justice to the stunning spectacle that is frozen water. I cannot describe it in words either. To get the idea you could gaze at the pics while listening to Elgar, drinking pure adrenaline, and being massaged by a Silverback Gorilla, and then multiply that experience by several. Or take me down to the Horse and Guitar when I get back and at about half ten I’ll start getting emotional and express it more effectively, probably in the form of a folk song. Goodnight.

PS: first photo copyright Shoosmith 2007. All others basically taken by Canon Powershot A530 with a monkey pressing the button.

Shiver me timbers! remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We have been steaming south pretty much constantly since my last entry, and you can view the progress of the JCR here. Current position is approximately 66S 70W, and we have just sighted Adelaide Island off the Antarctic Peninsula to port. The science party have now started doing 'watches', whereby each of us is assigned a gruelling 12-hour period of work time, either noon-midnight or vice versa. I am on the former watch. It's not too bad at the moment because we are generally setting things up, but when the seawater starts flying it will be hard.

We have now been at sea for a few days and the people onboard have started to settle down a bit and spend less time feeling peaky. However, yesterday I had, for the first time in my life, a brush with seasickness. The interesting thing is that it was nothing to do with 'sickness'. Instead, at about 5pm I felt so unbelievably tired that I had to go to bed because continuing to work could have become dangerous; getting a cup of tea I poured the (thankfully not very hot) water all over my hand rather than in the cup. The theory is that continually correcting for the movement of the ship is so hard on the body that it wears out a lot more quickly than usual. However, after an hour's nap, some chilli King Prawns in the Officer's Mess, and a slice or two of Hamish's excellent Cheddar with biscuits I felt fine and continued my watch through until about 1am.

Just before the tour starts, I should correct a previous entry in my blog. Remember I claimed that we were subjected to a force 10 gale? Well that turns out to have been an exaggeration. I'm not sure what strength the winds were, but over dinner the Master (Captain) assured me that they were not gale force. I'll try and find out the wind speeds. My former sources (not to be named) will be shot at dawn for misleading you.

Now, on with the tour. There is an official one here but mine is better! If you would like to step this way ladies and gentlemen...

First I will deal with the interior of the ship. This is a shot of my quarters, in which you will note that I have a cabin on my own at the moment. This might change after we have called in at Rothera base (towards the end of the cruise) because we are taking on a consignment of builders who worked at the base over the summer.

This is a picture of the officers' bar. It is open 24 hours a day to cater for the various watches and sells very reasonably-priced drinks and snacks.

Here is the officers' mess. We are serverd our 4-course meals at the table by the hard-working stewards and enjoy a glass of wine or two with dinner occasionally. It also serves as a cinema for the nightly DVD viewings.

Next, I ventured up to the bridge to have a look around on your behalf. It's very interesting but there's too much say here, so I will instead present you with a couple of pics. In the first, you are looking at the ship's log (yellow pages in foreground) and in the background the various (not brilliant) charts of the area, which will be edited during and after our cruise.

In the next, you can see Douglas, the 3rd Officer, in charge of the ship. Instead of the large wooden steering wheel that you might expect from Hollywood films there is simply a small joystick to steer the ship with!

Moving downstairs, we have two pictures of the Underway Instrument and Control room (UIC), where us scientists spend most of our time. In the first photo Geli is trying (unsuccessfully) to teach the English-speaking scientists how to pronounce Rothschild Island. In the second Mark is happily knocking off for another afternoon's sleep after finishing a 12-hour session at noon.

During a spell of calm weather I ventured outside to the upper deck to take photos of everything I could lay my camera on. I continued until my fingers were too cold to carry on, which in retrospect was pretty stupid. Anyway, here are some of the photos:

First, the superstructure taken from the aft deck:

Second, the aft gantry taken from above:

Third, the JCR's landing craft. On the JCR I counted one landing craft, two fully-enclosed lifeboats, two fast solid-hulled boats, three inflatable fast boats, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Finally, the Conductivity-Temperature-Depth meter (CTD), which is the thing we lower over the side. I will return to this in a later entry, as it is a very fancy piece of kit and the main focus of our science effort. For the moment, all you need to know is that the grey bottles take samples of the water at various depths (controlled by us from the UIC) and the various things below them record temperature, electrical conductivity (hence salinity), pressure (hence depth), and a variety of other things continually as the CTD is lowered through the water column.

That's all for now readers. Please bear with me as we are entering a period of very hard work and limited internet connection. At some point I will be out of range of the satellite communications for up to a fortnight. I'll do my best to keep you up to speed. Bye...

Wandering Albatross remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Once upon a time there was a ship known as the JCR and she was taking on fuel and 'beakers' (scientists) in Stanley. Then the time came to set sail for Southern climes and, as if by magic, a force 10 gale started blowing in exactly the path she wanted to take. So all onboard were told to prepare themselves for the worst and they started popping seasickness pills as if they were going out of fashion.

Switching back to the first person, when we sailed all was initially calm and I got some nice photos. Firstly, a shot of Mega-City Five, also known as Stanley:

Next, some of the hills around Stanley. Someone told me that the peak on the left is the infamous Mount Tumbledown, but I don't have the bandwidth to check this (maybe someone can comment?):

And finally for this section, a shot of most of the science party on the 'Monkey Island', which is the upper outside deck of the ship next to the funnels. From left to right we have Mark (Open University), Steve, Karel (University of East Anglia), Geli, Ted, yours truly, and Mags.

Not in the photo are our fearless leader Deb, who took the picture, and IT wizard Pete, who was tirelessly scurrying around fixing everything in sight.

So everything seemed to be going smoothly but deep down we all knew that things were going to change. As we got out of the protective bay of Stanley the wind started to build and when we got into deeper waters the swell became longer in wavelength and started to throw the ship about a bit. The wind got so high that I even had to put on my dazzling orange BAS jacket:

After a while we were in a full force 10 gale, with 3 metres of swell and the ship rolling 20 degrees from the vertical on either side. That made for an interesting night at the bar, and a very strange night's sleep. Basically I slipped up and down the bed in time to the roll of the ship, which was very comforting. I didn't have to deploy the straps in the bed, which are used as a 'seat belt' when it gets really rough. In general, anything not lashed down goes missing very quickly and I am typing with one hand while I hold down everything else with the other. Showering in particular is an interesting experience, as you have to chase the moving water jet round the shower without falling over!

Here are some pictures of the high seas. Firstly, some 3m swell going past the starboard side:

Next, a killer wave breaking over the bow. I saw this one coming 3 waves in advance but could still barely stand up to take the photo:

After a couple of hours labelling water sample bottles with Mags, I returned to the Monkey Island to watch the sun go down:

And finally, by popular demand, here is another pic of me in that dashing immersion suit...

Bye all, until next time.

• I hope you're keeping up with the lingo because I'm not going to repeat any definitions...

Full steam ahead remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Well, what an eventful few days I've had since I started my trip. The original plan was to fly from RAF Brize Norton to the Falklands in one go with a 2-hour stopover for refuelling at Ascension Island, but unfortunately the Met Office had a different idea. We were warned at Brize Norton that there was a chance that crosswinds at Mount Pleasant (the Falkland Islands air base) might prevent a landing, and lo! it was the case. After only an hour in 'the cage' at Ascension Island (where people stopping-over are normally held for their own safety), we were informed that we would be staying at the Travellers' Hill RAF base (affectionately known as Bunkbed City) until further notice. Didn't sound too bad until we were informed that none of our baggage would be leaving the 'plane, so I was stuck for what turned out to be 30 hours on a tropical island dressed in one set of stinky Antarctic-ready clothes with no toothbrush. Things got worse when I found I had to share a double bed with a strange man....

Anyway, to cut a long story short we had an 'interesting' time in Ascension. I went on an 'R and R' trip to Georgetown, which basically ended up being a trip to the pub, and I got a pink nose from the strong equatorial sun. Here is a (not very good) photo which is somewhat uncharitable but I think sums the place up a little:

Generally the scenery was military hardware and communications technology superimposed on a beautiful Martian volcanic rock landscape adorned with cacti and other succulent plants. An amazing place.

After some jiggery-pokery with our expectations we finally left Ascension at '1100 hours' the next morning. We then flew to the Falklands and on the way I read a very interesting paper about using a 6th-order Matlab routine to solve ordinary differential equations. Despite the cross-winds being a fantasy, the landing was pretty hairy and the plane swerved alarmingly down the runway to loud cheers from the crew of HMS Exeter, who were sitting a few rows behind us.

By the time we arrived in the Falklands it was late and we were knackered, so we hibernated in the Upland Goose, the hotel next to the local BAS office and a regular feature of tea-break conversations in Cambridge:

The place was heaven after all those RAF dinners and accomodation, and possessed such luxuries as a bar, fine food, a shower, and razors! After a wash, a feed, and a few jars of bitter we all collapsed into bed thankfully. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the Falklands landscape, which was stark and imposing, with rocky slopes surrounded by gorse and minefields. Hopefully some photos may appear later.

The next morning my trusty physiology woke me up nice and early, so I went for a walk around Stanley before breakfast. You will all realise that this means I must have been seriously affected by all the travel and lack of sleep. However, since I knew we were boarding the ship that morning at 10am, and had a recently-acquired sense for how badly our return travel plans could go awry, I was keenly aware that this might be my only chance to see any of the Falklands. I strolled around Stanley in the cool breeze and tranquillity of an early Sunday morning and it felt absolutely great, especially as I knew that a pot of tea and a Goose fry-up awaited my return at 0830. Just as I was inspecting a WWI memorial on a small hillock, I noticed the JCR (James Clark Ross) coming into port and snapped a pic:

I have now been on the JCR for two days and am just about finding my feet. It's a fantastic ship (in my limited experience) and everyone seems extremely friendly and helpful. The bar is cosy and the food is really good, served at the table by the stewards. It is shirt and tie only at dinner and, of course, the curry drips from my chin are caught in the napkin that normally resides in my personalised napkin ring... oh it's a hard life at sea!

Here are a few photos from the ship. Firstly a nice picture of the JCR loading fuel while 'alongside' (tied up in port) at Stanley:

Next, an embarrassing picture of Hamish (the Purser) using me as a shop dummy for demonstrating an immersion suit, which is donned to keep us alive in Antarctic waters if we have to abandon ship. It makes you look like a giant Jelly Baby:

I thought I'd put that one on the web to avoid blackmail in future. Everyone had a good laugh at me in it but I got some of my own back today when we had a boat drill and everyone else had to put theirs on too.

We are now pitching and rolling at sea and in a few days' time when I have assimilated the experience I'll tell you all about it. Suffice it to say that despite us experiencing 'severe gales' I haven't been sick yet. Very early days yet though, and squid for dinner tonight...

Before I leave I should tell you about Colm, now one of the Able Seamen on board. He turned up at BAS with an overnight bag from his native Ireland on the morning of the 22nd for an interview, and by 5pm was unexpectedly on his way to Antarctica with us still dressed in his interview suit! This was especially amusing at Ascension Island, as he was walking around a tropical RAF base dressed in pin-stripes.

PS: unlike most sailors, some of my readers are of a delicate disposition so, since this blog is intended for a family audience, please keep the comments as clean as possible. All rude messages can be emailed to me as usual. Thanks.

All aboard! remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Well, I definitely can't keep that up for two months. You have probably come to the right place, and this is my Antarctic diary. First off, some background information. I am me and I will be going on cruise JR165 aboard the RRS James Clark Ross. We will be spending two months away, during which time we hope to collect oceanographic and sea-ice data in the Bellingshausen Sea for the benefit of civilisation (whether they like it or not). You may contact me by email as usual or, in an emergency, via the British Antarctic Survey's liaison office. I will be departing RAF Brize Norton for the Falklands via Ascension Island on 22nd February, and after that it's anyone's guess. Weigh anchor, captain!

In the unstaged photo below I have indicated where the Bellingshausen Sea is. You may also notice some of the items I will take with me on the expedition.

Laying in the stores for a hard winter remains copyright of the author DrPaul, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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