Monday, January 7, 2008

sitrep 6/1/08

Sitrep 6th January 2008

Weather summary: A bright and sunny day with very little cloud. A slight northerly rarely topping 5 knots, with a mild southerly finally breathing in late afternoon, again only 1-5 knots.

Today's activities:

Most of the team enjoyed a sleep in this morning, until the bright sun made the tents almost too warm to stay in! After the late finish yesterday it was a low key start to a fine Sunday. As we filed in one by one to the mess for coffee, muesli and toast discussion began about last night's tide gauge deployment. The swell that has been running for the past few weeks seemed to have dropped off. Jon informed us that there was still a tag line attached to the tide gauge and it was entirely possible to retrieve it and try the whole thing again. Realising that conditions yesterday were good but conditions today are actually perfect, the gang rallied to the call. We waited until about midday before getting the gear together to ensure that everyone had their promised slow start to the day.

The gauge was retrieved and the staff repositioned, then whole exercise from last night was repeated. The lack of swell meant that holding position with the gauge staff was much easier, resulting in far more accurate measurements. The low tide also allowed me to get closer to the water with the telescopic level, also improving accuracy. Numerous sightings were taken, and the results tallied this evening. With four different readings to average from we narrowed down the height data to an accuracy of a few millimetres. While the boat was tethered in such wonderful conditions, Jon made a second trip to the middle of boat harbour, this time with Peter Morse in the zodiac with his stereoscopic cameras. Peter filmed some amazing shots from a view point that is rarely recorded from. Very satisfied with our new recordings we returned to Sorensen Hut for a Sunday roast.

Anne also spent time in Mawson's Hut removing areas of ice build up from drip water below the sky lights.

Steve found the famous white penguin again today, Brett has confirmed that it is the same one. We are all had the opportunity to check it out as it is quite close to Sorensen Hut at the moment.

Tomorrow we may have a visit from Orion, although we are still waiting for some email correspondence from them. The weather report is looking great, and we will look at consolidating some gear and start packing equipment for the first of our cargo pick ups.

Warm wishes from the MHF team

Peter McCabe Field Leader

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Brett! Saw your penguin article in the Age. Actually a customer who is a big penguin fan showed it to me she was impressed when I said I knew you - guess your famous! Thought I'd check out the blog to see how you are going. Looks like your doing a great job down there. May have missed the band name deadline but have you thought of naming in honour of your penguin. It may lift his profile. What about "The Village Penguins" with songs like "Macho Penguin" "Go South" "In the Antarctic" and "YMCA" (Y’all Mawson Camp Antarctica). Maybe get the Adelie to feature on the song "Black or White" Can penguins moon walk ? Or "It’s not easy being beige." Take Care Vic