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ANTARCTICA

American Tern

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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The resupply vessel for this season was the American Tern. Vessel offload is a very hectic time at McMurdo. Offload goes on 24-7 until the ship is emptied of its cargo then refilled with the outgoing cargo. Antarctica's biggest export, by far, is garbage....so that's most of what goes out on the ship. This year, the sea ice conditions delayed the ship's arrival at McMurdo by over a week. Even after the Polar Sea broke the channel (with assistance from the Healy towards the end), the brash ice was still severely clogging the channel. It was so bad, in fact, that the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer did not come to port this year even though it has limited icebreaking capabilities. The captain did not want to wreck its screws on the brash ice. In fact, the Polar sea lost one of its three screws during this year's operations. The fuel tanker Matthiesen did not come in either. Instead we rolled out hoses to it across the ice about 4 miles from town where it was parked. But the Tern had to come in. Three stations (McMurdo, Scott Base, and South Pole) depend on receiving things aboard this ship. So, after a week of trying to clear the channel of ice, the decision was made to make a run for it. Even though the two icebreakers had been going back and forth thru the channel for days, the Polar Sea still had to escort the Tern all the way in by cutting the ice right in front of it (the ice would refreeze quickly after a ship passed through). So this is a picture of that as seen from Arrival Heights. In fact, this was taken right at the point when the Tern got stuck in the channel in its way in (you can see it's "terned" a bit sideways). While the Tern was delayed, the Matthiesen arrived. This is the ship on the far right.

The Tern got stuck again, this time in the turning basin right outside the ice pier. The two icebreakers maneuvered around the Tern for hours trying to get it unstuck. The Tern would make a little run from time to time, but it wouldn't get very far before bogging down in the ice. The clouds this day, however, made for some good pictures of the whole affair.

Another pic, with the Polar Sea working away.

All three ships in this one. The Healy is at far right.

I really didn't have anything to do this evening, so I went upstairs to the Crary lounge and watched for a while. I don't suppose I'll ever see two icebreakers trying to get a huge supply ship unstuck right outside of my home again! A while later, two people from the lab came up with radios, and we listened in on the ship-to-ship chatter. Stuff like this: "Well, how about we try this?" "Sure, that might work." "OK, I'm gonna do this, that, and the other thing, and then you do this." "OK" 20 minutes pass and then: "Well shoot. We're still stuck." "Alright, then how about this?" "OK"....and so on.

Here's a couple pics through the Crary telescope. This one is the bow of the Tern.

And this one is the Tern and Polar Sea.

Finally, the Tern got a good head of steam and started moving toward the ice pier. I headed down to watch the arrival with Paola Massoli, who was on station from Rome to work with the LIDAR system. So here it is, almost here!

After hours and hours of sitting in the turning basin, the Tern finally broke free....and we had to run down there to catch it since it was coming in so quickly.

Alllllmost here....

I took a little movie of the ship arriving at the ice pier. It was cruising right along, faster than I would have expected. And it headed toward the pier at a slight angle...and plowed into the pier a bit. Maybe this was intentional, since they needed to slow down somehow as they came in hot just to stay moving through the ice. Either way, it took me by surprise, as my lame comment at the end of the clip will demonstrate.....

This is it, then: the American Tern.

One day during offload, I decided to pedal down to the pier and take some pics of this business. This is not really allowed unless you are working directly with the offload (which I wasn't), but a primary rule of McMurdo is that basically everything is forbidden and thus it's easier to ask foregiveness than permission.

More of the thrilling offload operations!

And more!

The Tern during a nice sunset.

This is the vessel operations control tower (of power!). Just after I took this picture, a surly individual came out and chased me away....

The two tracked vehicles in the center of the picture are Sprytes. These were the stalwart of the USAP's fleet for years. But their time had come, and this year the Pisten Bullies replaced them. Off they went on the vessel to be auctioned off somewhere. But I really haven't heard too many people lamenting the old Sprytes...they were not well-liked!

Fish huts, fish huts. Roly-poly fish huts. This row of various structures appeared shortly after the Tern arrived.

McMurdo still has some vintage vehicles in use. Quite a few of them, actually. Here is one of our ancient military trucks in use during the vessel offload.

A view from Radarsat. This day was pretty crappy, but overall the weather during offload was OK. This, I am told, is unusual. In most years the resupply ship brings bad weather with it, to the chagrin of the offload personnel. In addition to the locals, the USAP will fly in a bunch of NAVCHAPS (young Navy guys) to work the offload.

So the Tern was unloaded and then filled back up with Anarctica's "returns". Here it is, ready to go.

And here it is, going. Seeing how difficult it was to get the ship in, I guessed that it would be a real ordeal to get it out. After all, it had to back up! But nope. It left pretty quickly once it got going.

Adios!