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ANTARCTICA

Laurence M. Gould

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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Here is Punta Arenas, Chile (PA). The journey to Palmer Station has nothing in common with travelling to McMurdo or South Pole. Palmer is on the "other side" of Antarctica, on the Antarctic Peninsula. The peninsula extends northward from the continent towards South America, and so USAP conducts their peninsula operations from the southern end of Chile. To get to Palmer Station, you fly from your home to Dallas, Santiago, and Punta Arenas (about 24 hours total travel time, with a stop in Puerto Montt). At Santiago and Punta Arenas you are assisted by AGUNSA, a Chilean agency that USAP contracts for logistical support. At Santiago, you are met by Jimmy and his brother Raoul who help you out with your luggage, customs, getting to the right gate, currency exchange, etc. Nice guys. Then you are met in PA by Jimena (hopefully I recalled the correct spelling of her name), who directs a contingent of people to load your stuff in a van and drive you the ~15 miles from the airport to your hotel in PA. This is very nice, because after being deposited in a foreign country after 24 hours of travelling, I am more than happy to let the local, paid experts do my thinking for me. Another thing that you have to keep in mind is the little customs form that you fill out on the plane while en route to Chile. This is a small form asking for generic info about who you are, where you're going, blah blah blah. OK, great. You turn the form in and they give you back the carbon copy...you know, the kind of flimsy inconsequetial receipt that you just crumple up and throw away. Right? Wrong! You need to keep this innocuous little thing with you, yes you do. Turns out, they want that back when you leave the country. Why? I dunno. Your USAP instructions actually do tell you to keep this form with you, but it is somewhat confusing in that Chilean customs will staple your visa to your passport when you enter. So it is easy to think that "Oh, the official-looking-visa-type-thing stapled to my passport is the thing I need to keep with me" when in reality that generic carbon copy thing is what they want. So, to ensure that you won't bugger things up, the MPC (marine projects coordinator) asks you for your passport and that little thingy when you get onboard the boat to go to Palmer Station. Which segues to....

...the next part of your journey. The day after you arrive in PA, you go to the AGUNSA warehouse and get your ECW issue. This is a distinctly different set of clothing than you get for McMurdo and South Pole, but more on that later. Then, a day or two later you will move your crap out of the hotel and onboard the ship. Palmer Station does not have an airfield, and is supplied by vessel only. There are two ships used by the USAP: the Nathaniel B. Palmer (see here) and the Laurence M. Gould. My ship was the Gould, however both of them happened to be in PA at the same time. So here they are moored at the pier together.

The Palmer is substantially bigger than the Gould, and possesses greater icebreaking capabilities. It is used more widely about the Antarctic than the Gould, which is primarily the shuttle and resupply vessel for Palmer Station. Both ships have laboratory space on board for oceanographic research and will house scientists (mainly during the summer season) who will undertake all manners of inquiry into the mysterious secrets of the murky depths. This is a pic of the Palmer.

Here's one of the Gould. The paint scheme is the same on both boats, and they were built by the same outfit. However there are many obvious differences in design between the two ships.

Both vessels are owned and operated by Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO), a Louisiana firm that also built the ships, under their North American Shipbuilding branch. So the captain, officers, mates, engineers, galley crew, and deck hands are ECO, and the science support staff, coordinators, cargo handlers, and technical staff are Raytheon. The passengers are other RPSC employees going to Palmer Station (or wherever) and scientists.

This is one of the Palmer and Gould at the pier after dark.

Another night picture, this one of just the Palmer. I understand that USAP is making plans to replace the Palmer with a much larger ship.

I ended up staying at the Hotel Jose Nogueira. Jim, my boss at Biospherical, recommended this place and it turned out to be the nicest in town. Holly, an acquaintance from McMurdo this season, was also staying here so we walked around town for a while before joining a few other ice people at Sotino's for dinner. Another first rate place...the seafood in PA is outstanding. Best calamari I have had. The next night we stayed on board the ship, and departed around 10 am. Here is the Gould's crane loading some of the last bits of cargo on board.

These are a few fishing boats operated by the locals. Punta Arenas is located in a pretty desolate area, in the Magallanes region of Chile. The town itself is also not what I would call luxurious or opulent either. But I liked the place. It has a very "lived in" feel to it, without being seedy or run down. Many buildings and houses are painted bright colors. Of course, being a port town there is a wide selection of whorehouses (or so I hear), and it is not a bad idea to be on your guard. The captain of the Gould tells a story about returning from a long cruise a little while back...the crew was in Sotino's having a good time when they were acosted by a group of locals. It seems they thought the gringos were celebrating the onset of war with Iraq, which had just happened. More than words were exchanged before the misunderstanding was sorted out. Part of me would like to spend more time travelling around southern Chile on the way home. The Torres del Paines national park is supposed to be breathtaking, and the glaciers we flew over on the way from Puerto Montt to PA were astonishing. However I am still a little lacking in both motivation for travelling and travel funds. Lots of things still planned for the rest of the year, and my income has slowed to a trickle relative to what it was 2 years ago....

So anyhow, we pulled away from the pier and started out through the Straits of Magellan, toward the Atlantic side of Chile. The law requires a Chilean pilot to steer the boat until you reach the high seas.

Me as we left the pier. I hadn't been out on the ocean before this, and here we were departing for the Drake Passage on a boat which is not renowned for its gentle demeanor in rough waters. An "interesting" fact about the Gould is that when it was initially launched, they found it had a significant list to one side. This was due to the fact that the ship was asymmetrical (weight-wise) in a big way. So, the other side of the ship had some concrete added to it to balance the thing. But then, with the added weight, the ship would have too great a draft to pull into the pier at Palmer Station. So they added these little pontoon-looking metal flares on each side to stabilize the ship. I wondered what these things were when I first saw the ship, but I figured they were somehow part of the original design. Surely the shipbuilders had them in mind from the get-go, right? Uh, not quite. One would think that in the thousands of years of mankind's shipbuilding experience, the accumulated design knowledge would preclude production of a multimillion dollar research vessel where you need to pump concrete into it to keep it level. But back to the sea: the Drake Passage has a hell of a reputation for being rough...I have heard many stories of 100 mph winds and 60+ foot swells. A fellow I met in McMurdo last year described the view out his porthole during the crossing as a "washing machine set on THRASH".

We continued on southward along the island of Tierra del Fuego. This is the southern end of the Americas, and this is what it looks like from the sea.

On to the open seas. Here is a picture of the ship making its way southward.

Before I left, many people had advised me to take seasickness pills, or to use the seasickness skin patch, or to buy a little electronic stimulator to wear on your wrist (which somehow helps the problem). But I figured I would try it "au natural". I had no experience to tell me if I was prone to seasickness or not, so I decided to find out. And I knew they had meds on the ship to help a little if problems arose. Day 1: perfectly calm seas as we headed through the Straits and south along Argentina. Day 2: gentle little 5 foot waves...and me giving the toilet a bear hug. Didn't take long to find out the answer to my question. So I started taking a half-dose of some pills, and was alright the rest of the way. Not great, but alright. It was still a little uncomfortable living in a house that has freedom to rotate and translate in all 6 directions, and does so constantly. Especially being below deck when there is nothing fixed (like a horizon) to keep your eyes trained on. Lying down, however was usually a good feeling...like being in a hammock. I slept very well on the ship. However, the seas never amounted to much. The weather held and the Drake turned out to be very kind to me. There are various information screens that are shown on all TV's around the ship, showing GPS info, speed, temperature, etc. Also listed are the ship's current roll and pitch angles. The highest I ever noticed were 10 degrees in either direction...not too bad. This is a picture of the seas on a typical day, with a section of a rainbow off the bow. The total boat journey was about 4 days.

Soon after getting underway, the captain gives you a briefing on general ship operations, policies, and safety. Part of this is getting into Mustang suits, which are designed to help you survive for a little while if you get dumped into the sea. He said he'd personally known someone who lasted two days in one of them before being rescued. I am a little skeptical of this...the cold water sucks heat away from you at an incredible rate. Naked, you might last 20 minutes if you are lucky, and the Mustang suits ain't all that thick. The divers at McMurdo do dives of 45 minutes max, and it's usually the cold that drives them out. Anyhow, another part of the briefing is getting into one of the ship's lifeboats, which look like this.

Here's the captain continuing the info session inside the lifeboat. The passenger limit for these is 44 people, believe it or not.

One of the ship's superstructure, from the back deck.

The next bunch of pictures are just generic images from around the ship...like this anchor mounted on the starboard side above the main deck.

Mooring ropes. When we got to Palmer and the ship was being tied down, I could hear bits of these ropes breaking under the strain. Not sounds of rope stretching, but sounds of fibers breaking. The ropes looked to be patched and repaired in many spots. The strain on these ropes is incredible, and I for one would not want to be 'downwind' of one if it gave way.

An exhaust stack. One thing about this site which I have gradually realized is that I have a million photos of trivial things. Initially, it was because there was a sense of novelty and interest that I had in all things Antarctic, even things which would normally be mundane. So I'd take a picture..."hey, isn't this neat-o?". Walking around the Gould, I wasn't really inspired to take many photos, but I did anyway out of a sense of duty. Not really duty to people who might be reading this page (really, do you honestly care about an exhaust stack on this ship?) but more because that's the way I have made all my other pages on this site. But then again, I didn't really have anything else to do on board besides watching movies and sleeping.

Here is the bridge. This really is the place to be when you're on board, and the crew does not mind if you hang out here. There wasn't much to see when we were sailing across the Drake though.

Another one from the bridge. The main bridge is about 1/3 the width of that on the Palmer.

Being a very new ship, there isn't that much nostalgia or memorabilia on board. It's a clean, efficient, modern, and therefore somewhat sterile environment. One thing that caught my eye, however, was this specimen bag which belonged to Laurence Gould himself. He was a respected scientist and Antarctic explorer, who was on the expedition with Byrd which produced the first flight over the South Pole. He and a small party trekked out to the foot of the Transantarctic Mountains to set up an emergency camp halfway between Little America Station and the Pole in case Byrd had aircraft trouble. I believe it was on this trip that he and his men found a little rock cairn erected by Amundsen in 1911 on his way to the Pole. Now how cool would THAT have been?

Similar to the Palmer, the Gould has a primo lounge area, complete with leather furniture and a nice TV and DVD player. The Big Lebowski is playing here ("sir this IS our most modestly priced receptacle"). As I said before, this stuff, if it were left anywhere at McMurdo, would be trashed in less than one summer season.

On the way down, I was fortunate enough to have a cabin to myself...probably because I am technically a 'grantee' (read: beaker) this time around. The room had a computer as well. The Gould's electronics tech will connect to a satellite three times per day to upload and download email. You have a small quota (measured in 100's of KB for the journey) which is provided for free, and after that you are given a bill for additional files transmitted.

Down into the depths of the ship, this is an assortment of milvans, used as berthing areas during summer cruises when there are more people on board. This is the USAP's marine equivalent of South Pole's "summer camp", where Korean War era Jamesway huts are erected to house the excess population. But, being a winter supply cruise with no additional science being done, it was a reasonably small crowd and these dismal domiciles were empty.

A shop area, also in the depths of the ship.

Spare propeller blades.

The ship's galley.

The electronics lab. On every cruise, nominal oceanic data is recorded...ocean temperature, salinity, etc. Most of the time, the onboard technicians will also do some other simple scientific tasks, such as launching various probes into the sea at various intervals and running more sophisticated tests on the sea water.

The ship's wet lab. As we got underway they asked for volunteers to assist with the sampling activities, since tasks are scheduled round the clock and it is often helpful to have more than one person. So I signed up. There are automated instruments here in the wetlab which continuously sample the sea water, however testing for salts and CO2 require further analysis ashore, so every now and then you grab a sample of sea water from the tap, in a specific way, and put it aside for delivery to the science group back home.

Another thing they do routinely is launch XBT's, or Expendable Bathythermographs. These are little torpedo shaped instruments which plunge to the sea bottom and transmit temperature data back to the ship via a thin wire as they go. There is a launcher mounted on the port side of the ship's stern. It will launch the probes automatically, however it needs to be refilled from time to time. Here is Tom, a marine tech, and Tonya, a painter headed to Palmer Station, doing just that.

Speaking of Tonya, I went for a walk with her and Holly (an acquaintance from McMurdo) to see the Punta Arenas town cemetery. She mentioned that it was unique and somewhat well known, so I tagged along after getting the ECW gear. Here are a few photos of this place. It is a very different way of burying the dead than any cemetery I had seen, and quite beautiful with all the individual and family graves, each with their own styles and colors. And from the small world department, Tonya's boyfriend had actually met Paola in McMurdo. I found out completely by accident that the two of them had then met up with her while they were vacationing in Rome!

This picture turned out very nice, and in fact it's the only one on this page I'm at all proud of. The trees in this cemetery were a type of pine which they kept trimmed in these round, slightly conical shapes. Also, many of the graves had pictures of the people in little glass cases. I had never seen this in the US, but I liked the idea. It actually made me stop a couple times... OK, this is what "Juan Barros" actually looked like. A much more human touch than just a name carved into stone.

I liked the pose of this statue.

A typical plot...with a little wall, adorned with flowers, stone markers, crosses, and photographs in a glass case. Some of the wealthier people had large masoleums built, and some of the poorer ones just had little (although thoughtfully decorated) boxes in a wall. This one seemed like a middle-class burial plot.

So after a little more than 2 weeks since leaving Palmer, the Gould arrived again and those of us departing started getting ready to go. The port call this time was about 1.5 days. The replacement part for the instrument was the first thing off the boat, and I went to work immediately making some modifications, installing the brand new shiny phototube housing, and running a slew of tests on the now-fully-functional system. I ended up working straight through the port call (minus 8 hours for sleep, 2 hours for some last beers at the bar, and 6 hours to spare), but everything went well and the instrument was left in good working order, ready to take another year of UV observations. When the ship was getting close to station, I walked down to the pier to get a few pictures of it coming in. I thought it would be cool to see it arriving at night, and I was right. Here is the Gould lighting up the fog and sea just around Bonaparte Point.

The ship rounded the point and the crew was shining its floodlights at various things as it came in. They actually lit up the face of the glacier across Arthur Harbor, which was pretty cool.

Another one of the ship rounding the point, coming straight at us.

The ship came in going forward until it was a hundred yards or so from the pier, then turned and backed the rest of the way in. A couple pics here of it doing that.

I liked this one, with the icy edge of the pier and a little iceberg in the view as the ship was almost in. While the ship is docked it puts out much more light than the station itself.

One last photo here from the Gould

Make that one more last photo- it has nothing to do with the Gould, especially since the Gould is a dry ship. Here is the world's southernmost brewery...Austral. I walked out here one afternoon after arriving back to Punta Arenas... check that one off my beer-tourist list.