Station Gakkel (7-8/9)



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 the ice at the same time. Apart from the usual coring teams, also project-specific groups were allowed on ice, and we went with John to a lead away from the windshield of Oden. The cold northerly winds were noticeable, especially while doing water samples. More operations were planned for this station, but due to the risk of storms in the North Atlantic, we wanted to leave this station already in the midnight.

 







In the evening after dinner there were the semifinals in pingpong - where the winners for the final game on Friday were determined. It was two completely different games, but super interesting and there was an exciting final to come!


This station ended with a helicopter flight for retrieval of the fishing equipments before departure around 4 am the next morning. 

It was snowing, cloudy and cold on Thursday (9/9) morning as I was launching my second last early morning weather balloon. It all went well, but it was really slippery on deck! Thursday was only transit time to our final Ice station I. The captain decided to take another way to reach our destination to avoid thick ice and thus make us travel faster. Also, as we were eager to catch fish, we were planning for new locations for station I and a possible box coring station based on where we could find fish. During the day, there was time for catching up with emails, documenting metadata from the last ice-stations, sort out some photos and resting.

 Also, as we are organising a competition of the highest (and lowest) weather balloon, we were artistic during the day as we were preparing prices for the winners. These helium-filled balloons will actually expand to up to 30m in diameter up in 27km height before they explode and descend down to the Earths surface again. Later in the evening, at the usual time at 8 pm, we gave our (most likely) last Lindy Hop class - topic of today was swing outs again. We taught a small 4 times 8 choreo - with a 8-count basic, lindy circle, Swingout from closed and Swingout from open (all my Lindy Hop-firends know what I am talking about :) ). Even though we only had two classes for swing outs until now (for some only one class), they were so good and again, makes me so happy seeing them so happy dancing! I hope we can organise one more social dancing before we arrive in Helsingborg, and maybe one more class?


Tomorrow, Friday 10/9, we are supposed to arrive at out last ice station: Station I. 



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