Ice station H (5-6/9) - Helicopter ice station on Monday 6/9





The ice stations were really close to each others, we just left one and the same evening we were supposed to reach our next station. This meant a lot of work for many of us - filtering and measuring water and ice core samples, preparing all the equipments ready for the next station, archive  data from instruments etc. We arrived at Station H on Sunday evening around 5 pm, starting with CTDs and again a helicopter trip for deploying fishing equipments at 8pm. I felt sorry for them - they had to get up early at 3 am in the morning for retrievals of the equipments and now same evening they had to go out for deployment at the next station! As this was not the first station, they were already experienced and effective, and fortunately returned to the ship already around 10pm in the evening. I was also planning to give a dance class together with Frank this evening at 8 pm, but the sudden change in the plans and the earlier arrival at Station H changed the relaxed evening to a stressful one, and lot of us were super busy and I lost my dance partner since he went for the Heli. But in the end, three followers joined the dance class and we went through some follower styling tips with twists and some solo jazz - I am happy the dance class was not cancelled and it gave us all a lot of joy. 

Evening scenery

As CTDs went on the whole night, I finally managed to go early to bed - around 10.30 pm, to make up some of my sleep deficit due to the early 5am balloons - as I had to get up early tomorrow as well. 

Monday morning was cold, windy and foggy as I launched the morning balloon. This time it was not without complications - the wind made the balloon fly horizontally and exploded in my arms! In a small shock, I had to prepare a new sounding and a balloon - the second time I managed to launch it, without the balloon hitting the ship or exploding. Due to the strong winds, the beam net was cancelled and they started to operate CTDs in the morning and the ice work was scheduled for the afternoon. The winds decreased during the day and the 12UTC balloon was more successful. Today was also Salars birthday and thus we got cake for fika, no vegan one though but still cake! 

It was a bit unclear if we were allowed to go on the ice, since there were no accessible lead close to the ship. I went to work on the bridge to be closer to the polar crew and thus getting the updates as soon as possible. In the end, we got offered to go out with the helicopter to a lead, and after some discussion and convincing John to try out the helicopter, we managed to fit in all our gear in the helicopter - so this ice station turned out to a helicopter ice station for us! Yippiii!!! It was a successful station and everything went smoothly - the wind had decreased and it was not that cold anymore. On the picture you can see me and Ted (our pilot) smiling in front of the helicopter, with Oden on the background. The evening ended with CTDs and helicopter retrievals before the begin of the next transit around midnight. 



Ready to land!




Pilot Ted and me happily posing in front of the helicopter

John fishing gases of methane and carbon dioxide between air and water with our gas chamber right at the ice edge.

Happy me getting to fly with the helicopter :) 


From now on, we have only 5 days left for research, which is supposed to include one shorter ice station at the Gakkel ridge (8/9), and the last ice station I on Friday-Saturday (10-11/9), before the begin of the final longer transit back home to Sweden. The last ice station included a lot of excitement - with two wildlife visitors! I will post more tomorrow from our last days of research on Oden during the SAS polar expedition 2021.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NorthPole Celebration (Monday eve 16th) & Ice Station B (Sun-Mon 15-16th) and Ice station C (19-20th of August)

Image
As usual, the past four days has been adventurous - and history has been made (dancing on the Norhpole to live music)! For today’s blog, I want to tell you about our two last super ice stations (station B right before the North Pole and station C, which is ongoing right now), and the big North Pole celebration. In between the ice stations we had some calm days - transit to the next stop on Tuesday, as well as transit and a few CTDs on Wednesday. The ice conditions were variable - at the North Pole we had some thicker ice and some of the planned stops on the way were cancelled due to the ice conditions, which took us also longer to transit than expected. However, at yesterdays ice station, the ice was thinner again, but with a heavy crystallised snow cover on top. The weather was variable - from cloudy to partly sunny and then back to cloudy and foggy. We also had some light snowfall the last days! Let me start with the Ice station B on the day we also reached the North Pole. We were lo
Read more

Cancelled Helicopter flight for Friday 6/8 BUT 36h Ice Station Saturday - Sunday

Image
Friday started as usual - getting up at 5 to launch the morning weather balloon. I was disappointed by the weather conditions I was facing that morning - fog! Not only did the fog prevent us from the helicopter flight, but also the fact that we were a bit behind our schedule and had to reach our first ice station at 86 N by Saturday. Therefore, unfortunately our planned helicopter flight was cancelled and we were mostly steaming the whole day. For many of us, as all CTDs were cancelled too, it ment a more relaxed day: playing cards, doings sports, resting, watch movies, sleeping... For others, it ment intensive planning and preparation for the first ice station. In our project work, we were doing water sampling from the water 8m below the ship, measuring the CO2 concentration in the water. We aim to do several water samples per day during the expedition. It was nice to have one more relaxed day - time to breath and charge yourself - The work on a research ship can be really heavy - som
Read more

Station Gakkel (7-8/9)

Image
We left from Station H in the midnight 6/7 September and the whole Tuesday 7/9 was transit towards the next stop. There was a plan to stop for a CTD, but the captain decided we should just go on and save some extra time for the transit over the Atlantic, in case of bad weather. Tuesday was relaxed. After the morning balloon there was time for sports, computer work, movies and in the evening even dancing and watching Jumanji 2 with 15 people around midnight in the TV-room. Rest when you can!  Station at Gakkel Ridge Wednesday 8/9 Morning scenery I woke up this Wednesday (8/9) morning to a lovely scenery - the sun was shining but also some fog, making a magical landscape for balloon launch. We were still transiting to our station today and reached it around lunch time. As always, this station started with a helicopter flight for deployment of fishing traps as well as ice work and CTDs begun around 1 pm. This time the gangway was out, which made it possible for more than 4 people to be on
Read more