A day in the life...

I thought I'd give you a little insight into what a day is like here. The ship just arrived, so it's a little bit abnormal because there is a lot of getting the new people settled in. I'll start with a little bit of yesterday first.


Palmer Station through an iceberg

The ship arrived yesterday morning and they started offloading the new people, as well as a bunch of cargo, including our last food shipment to get us through the winter. The only other food we'll be getting before winter is a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables (freshies) on the last ship down next month. Because I'm on the line handing crew, I had to be out there to tie the ship up. It was supposed to be here for a couple of days to offload, but the winds were going to be 65 knots last night, so in the afternoon we had to go out and untie the ship so that it could go out and cruise around until the winds died down so that it wouldn't bash against the pier. Then last night after dinner it was monthly patching of all the servers, which I got done around 10 pm. Normally I would sleep in a bit when I have to do something like that, but we had to be back out at the pier to tie the ship back up first thing in the morning since the winds had died down.

Fur seal on Bonaparte Point

After getting back from tying the ship back up, it was a morning of being a systems administrator, which was mostly dealing with the fallout from the monthly patching because people didn't get off their computers beforehand like we'd asked them to, and a lot of things were in a funky state and had to be sorted out.

Fur seal on Bonaparte Point

After lunch we had fire training. We just had a fire training a week or two ago, and we're only supposed to do it once a month, but the head of the fire crew is also the facilities and maintenance coordinator who decided to get two things done at once. If for some reason we can't get the fire pumps to pull water from the sea, like if it's frozen and we can't auger through the ice to get the pump intake hose in, we can use the hot tub as a water source as it holds about 1500 gallons (it's part of an old fuel storage tank) and we can pump off it for about 15 minutes.

Giant Petrel adult, Bonaparte Point

Well the water in the hot tub was getting a little sketch, and the facilities guys had to drain and clean it, so they decided to have a little fire training to drain it with the fire pumps instead of the drain hole at the bottom of the hot tub.  Fifteen minutes instead hours. Done deal.

Giant Petrel young, Bonaparte Point



After that it was about time for the 3 o'clock, which I should explain. Every work day, at 9am and 3pm, it's break time. The chefs put out something for both, usually something freshly baked, and/or some fruit, and everybody gets together and has a coffee and pastry and a chat. Nobody talks about work, it's kind of like a Swedish fika. When 9 and 3 come around, a lovely woman's voice comes on the station all call and says something like "The time is now 9am". I found out, because she stopped announcing it the other day and I had to fix it, that it's not really to announce break, but rather to test the man overboard alerts that get broadcast station wide if it were to really happen. Another two for one!

Lonely Gentoo Penguin, still molting, Bonaparte Point

After the 3 o'clock, I went back to work for a bit until we had to go untie the ship yet again. A science group is going out for a couple of days to collect fish for study.  So line handling four times in two days-definitely not the norm. Then it was back to work until dinner time, and since I didn't have GASH (reminder-galley and scullery help), my night is free and I thought I'd write a blog post. So that's pretty much what my days are like. It's really nice that it's not all sitting at a keyboard, and that it gets broken up with fun, and getting outside, even for work. It could be line handling, fire training, or it could be something like helping the chefs bring in food from the frozen food locker. If anybody needs help they announce it, and if you can break away, you can go for it. It's very nice, very cooperative.


A 24 hour time lapse video of the ship coming in yesterday from the web cam

** The pictures above are not mine. The pic of the iceberg was taken by one of our marine techs as he was headed back to the station from a scientific dive trip. The others are from the station doc, Steve, from when we went on a hike to Bonaparte Point last weekend after the restrictions were lifted. It was really rainy and snowy, and I didn't want to bring my DSLR, but he had a waterproof point and shoot and let me have his pics from the hike. **

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