Sunday, January 13, 2008

sitrep 13/01/08

Sitrep 13th January 2008

Weather summary:

Bright, sunny, no wind, and temp somewhere around 4 degrees. Another day of stunning perfection at Cape Denison.

Today's activities;

Well things were rolling fairly early this morning, I raised L'Astrolabe on the radio just before eight. They were sitting twelve miles off the coast, and the helicopter deployed from Dumont D'Urville was about 35 minutes away. By the end of the radio telecast everyone was cleaning the sleep out of their eyes and preparing for some visitors. There was a French team of divers and surveyors to deploy a floating GPS buoy, and set up the GPS unit at Sorensen Hut. The divers also inspected our tide gauge which is lying in a nice sandy bottom. I must say Jon was in his element working with the team and their boating operations, he and Steve downloaded the data from the tide gauge, and Steve hooked up all the electrical components of the Sorensen GPS to keep it running through the year. Afterwards, the French team gathered in Sorensen Hut and showed us some amazing photos that they took from the bottom of Boat Harbour. There are shots of the tide gauge and lots of shots of the kelp farms below. These images have been copied to us, and I'm sure more than a few people will be interested in checking them out.

Today was also intended as our major cargo offload, all the cage pallets sat waiting on the helipad, and there was some conjecture about taking them now or on the next trip. With the weather so perfect I reasoned with the voyage leader that we should do all the helicopter operations today. The problem was, all the mooring equipment for their marine science voyage was filling the deck space making access to the hold difficult. After much relaying a compromise was reached, all of our personal cargo and borrowed equipment which comprised of four cage pallets was taken to the ship. This still leaves five cage pallets of rubbish and old food packs, plus four empty cage pallets still on the ground (or snow). They now forecast on picking us up on Wednesday morning, and we will have our fingers crossed that the weather is conducive to helicopter operations.

We were rewarded for our efforts, in regards to the tide gauge deployment. With a bottle of real French champagne, which was promptly served out over diner tonight, followed by a home cooked fruit cake courtesy of Barbara Tucker, delicious!

Tomorrow in inventory day at Cape Denison, the Granholm inventory is almost done, and the Sorensen gear needs to be listed also. But after some hectic day in succession there will be a sleep in.

Warm wishes from the MHF team

Peter McCabe Field Leader

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