Journey to Palmer Station

My travels so far:

• Flight from Denver to Punta Arenas, Chile.
• Two weeks in Punta Arenas waiting for the vessel to arrive.
• Four days on the Laurence M. Gould crossing the Drake Passage.

While at Palmer Station I’ll be working with the winter station crew to develop safe work practices and evaluate the facility to see if there are opportunities to implement "Prevention through Design" type concepts, you know, safety stuff.

ARSV Laurance M Gould

Similar to deploying through Christchurch, NZ, one of the first things participants do is pick up their Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.  The gear is a little different since working on the vessel requires protection from the wet marine environment.  It's mostly Gortex type gear, no "Big Red" parka this time.

ARSV Laurance M Gould

After experiencing weather days due to some massive storms in the Drake passage, the vessel finally arrived six day late.  During the three-day port call, science samples are off loaded, new supplies were loaded, the vessel is refueled.  Within our program, about half of the crew are being swapped out with replacements.  The boats are chartered so the task of operating and maintaining the vessel fall under a different company.  We're only responsible for the labs and science operations.  During port call, we moved out of our hotel and onto the boat.  Normally it's two people to a room but there are not that many on the cruise so we each got our own room.

Berthing on the LMG

During our time in Punta Arenas, we did take a day off to go explore the city.  Its the middle of winter here so the weather was cold mixed in with rain and snow.   No one complained though after all, cold and snow is kind of what we do.

There were stray dogs all over the city.  This guy followed us for most of the day so we named him Osito which is Spanish for "Little Bear."

Osito (Little Bear)

We checked out the Punta Arenas Cemetary.  The cemetery had a very unique history and was rated by CNN Travel as one of the top 10 most beautiful cemeteries in the world.  The cold, snowy day made for a somber backdrop to the thousands of graves.

Cemetery of Punta Arenas

Finally, the time came to get underway.  After weeks of waiting, we were finally starting our four-day journey south.

Sunset While Getting Underway

Not knowing how I was going to handle the seas, I took the "Recommended" dosage of Dramamine.  That stuff could tranquilize a horse!  I ended up going from a full 50mg pill every 6 hours to 1/2 a pill with breakfast and one before bed.

Sunset on my first full day at sea.

We had an almost perfect crossing of the Drake Passage.  Swells ranged from about 6 to 12 feet compared to the 30'+ swells just a week before.  We crossed what they call "Lake Drake" with calm seas and no major weather.  My coworkers are giving me a hard time that the bad weather always happens on the North Bound leg of the journey so we'll see how that goes in a few weeks.

Calm Seas on "Lake Drake"

 On the last day of the trip, I slept in because the seas were calm and we had to slow down for ice (Made for good sleeping).  Being a bit sleep deprived and medicated, falling asleep is easy but getting good sleep is challenging.  I woke up to daylight and the first sighting of land.  It was an incredible feeling to know that I was back in Antarctica.

First Iceberg

Early morning arrival at Palmer Station.

Palmer Station

Tomorrow morning we are going on a four-day fishing cruise to attempt to catch some science samples.  I'll make sure to get another post up in a more timely manner.

JNIII