Antarctic Blog 2013
photograph © 2013 Lorena Lagos Pailla and Leticia Barrientos
Day 1: Arrival on King George Island, shipping out on Aquiles (19.2.2013)
Things that I found out the first day I arrived in Antarctica:
- One degree C is not at all cold when you're wearing the clothes INACH, the Chilean Antarctic Institute, provides. I've really known this since I began skiing in Colorado in the early 1980's (thank you Mark Clark) but I was kind of worried given the combination of wind and water we need to negotiate using the sampling ship that is taking us around to the islands off the Antarctic coast. We're sailing on the frigate Aquiles manned by the Chilean Navy (Armada de Chile), sampling different Antarctic islands every day. No, 1°C is not bad, unless it's really windy... and snowing (see wind-chill discussion in Day 4 below) or your gloves get really wet in a sleeting rain (see Day 7).... We flew in a small jet to King George Island in the South Shetland Islands from Punta Arenas, the largest southern city in Chile. We landed on King George Island on February 19, 2013, in light snow; Immediately we boarded zodiacs to get to the Chilean frigate anchored in the harbor at Fildes Bay, Antarctica.
- Getting onto an ocean-going vessel is choppy weather is no mean feat. All of the researchers sampling the Antarctic environment from this ship had to climb up out of a pitching zodiac via a rope ladder into the open hatch on the ship's side the day we arrived (rung spacing about 30 cm). Since we take samples every day, if it's choppy on the way out (5:30am the first day), we climbed down the ladder into the pitching zodiac and if the waves are 2 meters or more when we return, we climb back up the same way. If it's calm then the gangway can be lowered and we use that. It's got 30, metal steps from the level of the zodiac to an upper deck . (You can see it stored horizontally above orange suits in the zodiac. And see Day 5.) The rope ladder's only got 6 or 7 steps up from the water and so it lands you on a lower deck, but with the zodiac pitching a meter or so up and down with the ocean waves, those are 6 or 7 really challenging rungs. I took my gloves off for better grip.
- This blog is dedicated to Garry Tisdale, a friend of 35 years, and Antarctic traveler. Becky and Garry were a generation between my mother and me, and Garry taught history at Louisiana State University at Alexandria with my mom. His wife taught me how to fold envelopes and what her daughter felt like kicking in vivo. Garry died over 10 years ago. I found out in 2013 from Garry that I could go to Antarctica.
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Researchers returning to Aquiles after a sampling day |
The 8-step rope ladder used to board the frigate |
Need a metric-to-English unit cheat sheet? One meter equals approximately 3 feet; 0 degrees Celsius is exactly 32 F. Pretty cool!
Last newest thing I learned the first day in Antarctica: yeah, penguins are cute; however this is substantially compensated for, some might say over-compensated for, by the smell of their colonies. Their long, white squirts of excrement are visible everywhere. Red partially-digested fish is often easily visible in the streaks. While very trusting, seemingly random individuals in the colony act as warning beacons, stand near where you walk, and call out to everyone nearby that invaders have arrived. |
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