Nor(wich)way

Paragliding video

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:29:00 +0000

The summer school finished last Friday, and I travelled to Verbier where Paul is staying. I had booked a one-day introduction course to paragliding for Saturday. I was a bit scared about doing this, but it was lots of fun! We spent most of the day at "ground school" - learning to set up the glider and the harness, and how to take off (without actually taking off). In the afternoon I first did a short tandem flight - really great! And then it was time for my first solo flight... I was a bit nervous and I thought I'd be terrified through the whole flight but actually I didn't get scared at all and was able to relax and enjoy the flight. It's a great feeling to be flying on your own! It wasn't very difficult as you are almost "remote controlled" - you have a radio and they tell you exactly what to do. The landing went fine, though I did fall over face forward - but the landing field has very tall grass and it made the landing very soft. Paul was able to take a great video of my flight, and because he had a radio on him as well, you can hear everything they were telling me...

The flight was only about 5 minutes, but it was fantastic and I am now very keen to take a course myself!! I didn't expect I would enjoy it this much, I am usually quite a chicken and scared of everything... ;)

Paul is doing the last few flights he needs for his license at the moment, when he comes back we will leave for Vevey (near Montreux, at the lake of Geneva) until Wednesday. Paul has a lot of photos and videos of his 2 weeks of paragliding, so more soon!

Kung-fu Paragliding

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Today is day 9 of the 14 day course and so far I've done 11 solo flights, some of them lasting more than 20 minutes. I can now launch the paraglider fairly reliably and land using a left hand approach. Sometimes I need a bit of instruction over the radio to ensure the final approach is at the right speed and height, but each one is better than the last. Before landing a paraglider it's advisable to stand up in the harness and get ready to run, but initially I had a tendency to start kicking my legs considerably before landing, especially if the ground seemed to be approaching too quickly. People seemed to find this pretty hilarious, but fortunately I managed to stop doing it before anybody got a video.

Today, others stole the landing lime light though. One person landed on a parasol that the rest of us were sitting under moments before, and another landed so short that our instructor had to jump on his motorbike and speed down the valley to get a new vantage point to guide him in from! Most of us land in the field most of the time though!

From now on I will be learning to gain height by using thermals and to soar using winds blowing over ridges. These techniques need more specific weather conditions than simply gliding down from a mountain top, and I've had to sit out quite a few flights because the thermals or wind have been too strong for a novice pilot. It's a little frustrating, but hopefully I'll be going up rather than down for the first time quite soon.

Above are some pictures of a typical flight; The first shows people setting up their gliders on the mountain top ready for launching; The second and third pictures are taken from the launch site and show people who have been in the air for only a few seconds; and the last two pictures show the landing field. I haven't taken any aerial photos so far as I've had to concentrate on maneuvering too much, but I'm getting more confident so I might take my camera up at the end of the course.

Hiking in Les Houches

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:03:00 +0000

The summer school is pretty intensive, but if you take a lunch bag instead of sitting down for lunch, there is enough time for a nice hike. These two photos are taken on one of those hikes:

On Saturday we had the afternoon off, and I took the cable car up with a few people. It was a beautiful day, and flowers everywhere, very pretty!

Me with Anastasia and Claire, and one of the views along the way...

In the photo on the left we are standing in front of the Mont Blanc!

While on that hike, Paul called me to say he was coming to Les Houches! It's less than 1.5 hours to drive from Verbier (where he's taking his paragliding course) to Les Houches, and we both had the day off on Sunday so this worked our very nicely. I waited for him at the bottom of the cable car, and we went to Chamonix for dinner. A very touristy place, but pretty too! And it was the 21st of June, which is Fête de la Musique in France - so there were people playing music everywhere and we enjoyed strolling through the streets and listening to the different groups.

On Sunday (today) we took the cable car again, and from there we walked to the next cable car. It was mostly downhill and not a very difficult walk, but it was very warm so we took it easy and spent lots of time taking photos. The amount of flowers up there is just amazing, see here...

These photos are taken in front of the glacier coming down from the Mont Blanc, great views!

This is one of the stops of the Mont Blanc railway, a small train that goes up to 2300 m. We later climbed a bit higher, and on the right you can see the spectacular view of the valley towards Chamonix.

And here's a photo of Paul and the crazy car he took... He was going to rent a car but the rental company was closed and then one of the instructors offered him his car for the weekend... a very fun car in this weather!

Paul left for Verbier again in the afternoon, and we start lectures and tutorials again tomorrow. There's 5 more days left in the summer school, we finish on Friday after lunch. I'll hope to have time for a few more hikes though :)

The Views

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:52:00 +0000

The first picture below shows the main building of the summer school (Ecole de Physique). This is where we have all the lectures and tutorials, and generally hang out. Besides this building, there is a restaurant and several chalets where we sleep. The other photos show the view from in front of the main building at different times during the day... very stunning!

Les Houches

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:42:00 +0000

While Paul is (wishing he was) paragliding in Verbier, I am about 50 km away at a summer school on atmospheric boundary layers. Les Houches is right underneath the Mont Blanc and the summer school (at 1000m) has stunning views over the valley and the mountains. As in Verbier, the first 2 days here were rainy. And not just a little bit, more like a continuous downpour!

This morning we woke up to almost clear skies and amazing views. The restaurant has places outside too, so we can have our meals in the sun with a view - not bad! It's been a bit of a soap opera though, with one cook going home ill, and his replacement starting drinking heavily yesterday and continued until after breakfast today. He kept crawling around and falling over and finally had to be taken to hospital at lunch time. The lunch was very chaotic and we all had to help out with serving. Of course this cook has now been fired, and the previously ill cook has returned. The food tonight was really good, so we're all hoping that he will stay!

We had an hour free after lunch so we went for a very nice walk. I had to pay for it with getting sunburnt, but it was worth it. These photos are taken very close to the summer school:

The summer school is very interesting even though the subject is quite difficult. There are lots of Dutch people here so my Dutch can hopefully return to how it used to be. Ok, that's all for now, I'll try to post more photos soon. I just heard that Paul has had his first solo flight today, so hopefully he'll post another blog soon too!

Paragliding

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:14:00 +0000

On Monday I began a 14-day paragliding course in Verbier (Switzerland) run by Verbier Summits (www.verbier-summits.com). The course is a combined elementary pilot \ club pilot course and provides the minimum amount of training needed to fly unsupervised. During the first two days of the course I have learned only to take the paraglider out of its bag and attach the harness because the weather has been too bad to do anything else. I am hoping that conditions will improve soon so that I can get through the required syllabus in the available time. While waiting for the weather to improve have been for some short walks in the mountains behind Verbier. I don't go far because I need to be back in town quickly if conditions improve, but here are a couple of pictures showing Verbier and the weather I took this afternoon.

Beautiful Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:55:00 +0000

I'm in Stockholm for a conference (on boundary layers & turbulence) this week. It's been a very busy week - the disadvantage of going to such a specialized conference is that I can't really skip any sessions so I am usually around from 9:00 to 18:00 every day. I gave a talk yesterday, it went fine and it was a relief to have that done!

So there hasn't been much time for sightseeing, and even most of the evenings were busy with receptions and conference dinners (at stunning locations!). Luckily the evenings are long - no midnight sun here, but it doesn't get dark until midnight or so. Stockholm is an incredibly beautiful city! I'd love to spend more time here... The city is built on lots of islands, so there is a lot of water and ships everywhere, I love that. Here are some photos to give you an impression... they don't really do the city justice though, as I have only been able to snap quick pictures while walking around town with a group of people.

Today is the last day of the conference, and it ends at about 15:00. So there finally is some time to see a bit more! I'm going to visit the Vasa Museum to see the ship that "sunk and then came up again" as my supervisor keeps calling it. Then I have to leave VERY early tomorrow (4 in the morning...) to fly to Geneva (through London). I'll meet Paul there for the weekend, before he heads off to his paragliding course and I will go to a summer school in the French Alps. Busy busy... but enjoying myself!

Back in Tromsø

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:48:00 +0000

Sorry for the long silence on this blog! Last Sunday, the KV Svalbard arrived back in Tromsø and Paul's cruise is over now. I was supposed to fly here tonight, but I changed my ticket and arrived on Saturday instead. Paul knew nothing about this and it was fun to surprise him early Sunday morning - still asleep in his cabin, hehe.

They had an "open ship" on Sunday, for anyone interested in the ship or the science. The scientists presented what they had done on the cruise. Here's Paul explaining how the Arctic Ocean works...

I was around for most of the day and later when I went home, I saw the ship going under the bridge on its way to the dock where they were going to unload the ship.

Tromsø has changed a lot since we were last here! Hardly any snow left except high on the mountains, trees are turning green and there are lots of flowers around. The weather has been sunny and warm as well, very nice! This was yesterday in the city centre...

I'm only here until Sunday morning, when I start my crazy tour of Europe - first a conference in Sweden, then 2 weeks of summer school in the French Alps and then a few days of holiday in Switzerland!! It will be very busy and lots of traveling, but I'm looking forward to it. Especially to being back in Switzerland (my favourite country!) - it's been way too long since I was last there!

The midnight sun has arrived here so the days are very long. If the weather stays this nice, we'll sure go for a couple of trips - as soon as the car is fixed! It's been standing still for too long and the battery is completely flat. I'm going to buy a charger today so that should fix the problem. Hopefully more photos soon!

Brrr!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:22:00 +0000

The sea ice scientists, and to some extent the biologists are interested to know how much light penetrates though the ice to reach the water below (sunlight light warms up the ice and the water underneath and also allows algae to grow there). How do they measure how much light gets through the ice? Simple: send a diver with a light meter underneath! The first two pictures show a military diver from the crew, getting ready to enter the icy (literally) waters, while the last two pictures (taken by the divers) show the wonderful world underneath. The water temperature is roughly -2, while the air temperature is about -10.

17th May!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:39:00 +0000

The 17th of May is the national day in Norway and it seems to be a day that people really look forward to. Everybody has the day off work and lots of parading and flag waving occurs. I'm not normally a fan of this kind of stuff, but I have to admit I quite enjoyed it. On the ship we celebrated with various 'village-fete' type games on the ice. The first picture shows two of the guys from the crew analysing the aftermath of a fiercely contested nail hammering competition! The last picture shows a pølse (hot dog) and ice cream stand that was erected in the Helicopter hanger after the silliness on the ice subsided.

Ideal Conditions

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:03:00 +0000

The first two days of this leg were spent taking temperature and salinity profiles in a region of fairly open drift ice. This is bread and butter oceanography and with ideal weather conditions we've been quite relaxed. The water is about 2.5 km deep so it takes roughly two hours to lower the instrument to the bottom and back -allowing plenty of time to ponder the data. The water is extremely clear here as there are very few plankton and almost no suspended sediment. As a result it's often possible to see the underwater part of ice floes which appear bright turquoise. The second photo shows Laura preparing the instrument package to be deployed, and the last hand photo shows the instrument package abut to surface after a trip to the bottom.

De Noorderlicht ontsnapt!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:33:00 +0000

Here (as promised) is a series of photos showing how we broke the ice around the Noorderlicht in Templefjord. Although the ice was not much more than a meter thick it was quite an operation to carefully break the ice without damaging the Noorderlicht. The basic strategy was to make circuits around the Noorderlicht until a crack made by the KV Svalbard reached one side of the Noorderlicht. Then the process was repeated from the other side so that a circle of ice containing the Nooderlight was split in half and the ship was released. The operation was not all that easy with a ship as big as the KV Svalbard and took several hours. At one point a big piece of ice collided with the Noorderlichts rudder and threatened disaster - this is why the Noorderlichts crew are desperately trying to look under her stern in one picture! Fortunately the rudder was quickly repaired and all ended well.

The last image shows Barentsburg as seen from the KV Svalbard when we steamed past it this evening!

Right, it's late and the first day of Leg Two starts tomorrow so this is all for now...
Paul

Svalbard

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:46:00 +0000

I've just come back from a great couple of days in Svalbard! I arrived late on Thursday night. While the plane landed, I could see the KV Svalbard (Paul's ship) coming in to Longyearbyen. I managed to get a free taxi ride from someone and I arrived at the ship while they were still securing the gangplank - good timing! I wasn't sure if I would be allowed on board (it's an army ship after all), but one of the coastguard guys asked me: "Would you like to come on board? Shall I take your bag?" Wow, everyone was so friendly! And it was great to be reunited with Paul of course :)

Longyearbyen is quite a special place. It's changing from a community based on mining to one based on tourism. It was still very much winter there, and everybody moves around on snowmobiles. The first day was extremely windy (with lots of blowing snow) but we were lucky with the weather during the rest of the days - very sunny! (And very light, the midnight sun arrives in mid April here) Here are some photos of the town itself...

On Saturday the coastguard guys had organized a snow scooter tour. I shared a scooter with Paul, and spent most of the trip sitting on the back seat. Sounds like fun, but actually it's very bumpy at the back and you have to hold on tight. My arm muscles were hurting the next day! Here's a photo of the queue for the petrol station and us on the scooter - you have to wear a special suit, boots, and a helmet, like on a motorbike really.

The trip was very long - 120 km one way! We went through beautiful valleys, crossed the sea ice (with many seals lazing around) and spectacular glaciers... I often wished I had a camera on my helmet! We didn't make many photo stops unfortunately. We were with a big group (I think about 14 snowmobiles) and most of them were 19-20 year olds (doing their army survice) who were constantly racing each other. The scooters can go really fast, on flat bits of sea ice we went about 120 km/hr!

These photos are of our final destination: Pyramiden, a Russian mining town abandoned in 1998. It's bizarre to wonder through such a ghost town - there are still flower pots behind the windows and we found a workshop full of skates, bicycles and wooden ski's. We could have spent a lot more time there but after a quick lunch (including hot dogs - Norwegians are truly obsessed with hot dogs!!) it was time to head back. In the last picture you can see the world's northernmost Lenin statue...

We took the same route back, and this time we did have a photo stop at a ship stuck in the ice. The ship is called Noorderlicht - it's a beautiful Dutch sailing ship. They freeze it into the ice on purpose and it's used as a hotel and a basecamp for exploring Svalbard. It won't be frozen in for much longer though, Paul's ship is going to take it out of the ice tonight or tomorrow!

Just before coming back to Longyearbyen, we decided for a little detour to the top of a mountain that overlooks Longyearbyen and the bay. The view was amazing! The sun was shining through holes in the clouds and made bright spots on the sea surface - very spectacular!

It was quite a long and tiring day (250 km in total!), so on Sunday we had a rest day. We slept a lot, and then walked around Longyearbyen for a bit. There was not a lot to see though, everything is closed on Sundays.

On Monday it was time for some action, and we decided to rent a snowmobile again. We also had to rent a gun for protection against polar bears! It was a beautiful day, and we took our time to enjoy the landscape. This time I drove a lot as well, good fun!! I was a bit scared at first but once you get the hang of driving it's a lot of fun, and a lot more comfortable than sitting on the back of the scooter ;)

We went through such beautiful landscapes, mostly very big and empty, though we did pass some huts and even another abandoned Russian mining settlement (a very small one though). We also drove close to the beach, and with the sunny weather and the very salty smell you would almost be tempted to try the water ;)

Our destination that day was the Russian mining town Barentsburg (once owned by the Dutch, hence the name). This is a working mining town! It was very bizarre to suddenly be in Russia - Paul even got a "welcome to Russia" text on his mobile. The town looks quite grim, though the houses are quite colorful and there are many murals. The people were very friendly though, we even got a tour of some science labs from a Russian researcher who was based there for a few weeks.

Things you can do only in Svalbard: walk around town with a gun on your back... We didn't actually see any polar bears, just lots of reindeer (and I'm glad about that!). We also found this hovercraft lying around... how bizarre!

Another view of the town and me eating my sandwiches on some kind of boulevard place...

Barentsburg is only about 55 km from Longyearbyen, it took us about 3 hours each way, including many stops. A really nice trip! Renting a snowmobile is quite expensive, but it was really worth it.

I flew back to Tromso this afternoon, and Paul is now back on the ship for another 3 weeks. I hope he gets some good pictures of freeing the Dutch ship from the ice! I was hoping to come back to a green Tromso (last week almost all the snow had gone), but it has been snowing again!

End of leg 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:37:00 +0000

After a few days of quite hard work, yesterday provided a welcome opportunity to relax. The ship moored to an ice floe where it stayed for two days while the oceanographers continued to explore Eastwards by helicopter and the sea-ice people and the biologists studied the ice floe the ship was moored to and the things living underneath it. As there is only space for three people in the helicopter I reluctantly stayed behind on the ship (it was a stunning day for flying.).

Even worse, as one of our instruments only works with my laptop and not anyone else's I had to let the helicopterists take my laptop with them. Without a computer I couldn't do much more than label and organise sample bottles for leg 2, but that was actually not such a small task.

Anyway, I had the opportunity to soak just a few rays in a corner sheltered from the wind at lunchtime. It's pretty rare to have more than a few minutes of free time even when spending two months on a research ship as there's almost always something that needs to be done.

And, no sooner had I sat down on the deck than a message crackled over the radio by my side: "Bridge to ice ... there's polar bear about 300m away. Can you see it?" I recognise Steve's voice on a distant walkie-talkie: "Errrm, no there's lots of ridges. Perhaps we should come back to the ship?", "Ummm... yes. Perhaps you should. out."

We were under siege again (excellent!). In the photos you can see the bear approaching. As the beast was heading vaguely towards the gangplank the bridge tried to scare it with the ship's horn (which is truly deafening) but the bear responded with an expression that looked more like anger than fear and sank its teeth a little deeper into one of the biologist's mooring buoys! This float is nearly a meter in diameter and I was pretty amazed the bear could open it's jaws wide enough to bite into the curved surface, but that didn't appear to be a problem! After a while the bear wandered a little further away and then nonchalantly swam across the wake of open water that the ship left as it broke the ice on the way here! Apparently polar bears don't think twice about a quick dip in -2 degree water.

The good weather lasted until late in the evening and yesterday ended in a spectacular sun-almost-set with a thin fog developing over the ice.

This morning the this fog was still hanging over the ice seemingly just a few meters deep, so I hurriedly donned my flying suit and packed a lunch box. Sadly two hours later the fog had still failed to burn off, and the conditions were changing from just-not-quite-good enough-weather to plain old bad weather, so after lunch I accepted I'd probably flown for the last time on this leg and hung my suit up in the hanger. Around dinner time though things began to improve and it looked like my flying sandwiches wouldn't suffer the indignity of being eaten at the dinner table after all :). So got dressed again, jumped into the helicopter and made a bee-line for our last planned station. It was quite a nice flight over huge areas of dark nilus ice that's almost clear enough to see through, but before we reached our station the windscreen (is that the right term?) began to frost over! so we rapidly descended to a low altitude and re-traced our bee-line back to the ship. We'd measured everything we wanted except for these last two stations. As the helicopter touched down we decided it was probably best to call an end to leg 1.

As I write this the ship is extracting itself from the ice flow we were moored to (no dynamite this time) and turning the sharp end to point at Longyearbyen. We should arrive in about two days, at which point I'll be reunited with Hanneke, who is currently sitting in a plane heading to Tromsø.

Dandelions

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:05:00 +0000

Today I finally finished my work (for a meeting tomorrow morning) and I had the afternoon off! It was really sunny so I went for a walk around the lake at campus.

I played with the macro function of my camera, always fun! I came back with lots of photos of dandelions... I finally know it is actually pronounced dandeLIONS and not danDElions, the version I used for a long time! Paul thought it was funny and instead of correcting me he started saying it like that as well, which was very confusing! In the end I really didn't know which version was right and I had to ask other people, hehe. I still think my version is prettier though ;) what have they got to do with lions anyway? Though in Dutch their name means horse flowers which also makes no sense. Ahh I just found the origin of the name here, interesting!

Another funny story about dandelions is that my grandfather thought they were weeds and should be removed from the garden, and my mum didn't agree with this at all, she thinks they are pretty. Every time my grandfather came to our place, he would complain about the dandelions in our garden and my mum thought that was funny so on purpose she never removed them (2 stubborn people ;) ). She once gave him a framed photo of my brothers and sister and I in a field full of them... so this was a joke that kept coming back in my family!

Anyway, the best ones are the ones with "parachutes"!

It was really nice to spend some time in the sun! It will be strange to go back to the cold tomorrow... Well Tromso actually had temperatures of up to 18 degrees last week, hard to believe! But in Svalbard temperatures are still below freezing so that will be a bit of a change from English spring time...

Another update

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:20:00 +0000

We've been busier than usual the last couple of days, collecting temperature and salinity measurements as well as water samples from the deep. The weather although calm has also been quite dull, so I haven't really had the inclination to take many pictures. However, while I was on the phone last night after finishing work the sky cleared up to leave a great sunset with the last few clouds just disappearing over the horizon. I took the first two photos at about half past midnight - they show just how light it still was!

We were back to work bright and early this morning though but the clear skies of the night before were just a memory and we had a fairly chilly day. The blue thing under tarpaulin in the picture below is a winch with three and a half kilometers of wire on it that allows us to lower instruments to the bottom and to take samples. The crane itself has only a little bit of wire and just holds a pulley over the side of the ship, so it takes a well co-ordinated crane and winch driving to swing things over the side! After the instrument package is in the water the crane driver can go and have a coffee and I can safely control the winch from my computer (USB winch anyone?) which is situated in the nicely heated and insulated shipping container just visible on the extreme right. Being inside is a good thing as it takes about two hours to lower the instruments down to the bottom and back, but it doesn't have any windows so it's a bit sad to be stuck in there on a nice day.

It takes such a long time to lower the instruments because although the package is very heavy in air it doesn't weigh so much in the water. If we veer too quickly there will be no tension on the cable and it can loop and snag around itself in the water - or snatch as the ship rolls, which places enormous strain on the winch. Once the package begins to get deeper though we can speed up as the weight of all that wire hanging over the side maintains enough tension.

A couple of days ago while we were out at sea an unexpected roll, caused the tension to go very low and the wire got a loop in it, which then snatched tight. The cable survived, but the strands were horribly twisted and unravelled close to where the loop was so we had to cut it off at that point! The Norwegian term for this occurrence is getting 'an Englishman' in the wire. No one seems to know where the expression comes from though. I'm just glad this Englishman wasn't driving at the time or there might have been a few jokes....

When the water is more than about a kilometer deep we can't actually tell how deep it is using the echo sounder on the ship, because the speed of sound is influenced by the temperature of the water. We mustn't lower the instrument package to the seabed as the ship will be drifting at up to a knot and the bottom may have nasty sharp rocks (or at least disgusting mud). To avoid hitting the bottom we have an altimeter on the instrument package that tells us how far away the seabed is, but it can only see about 80 meters - so we have to watch it carefully! Whats more when the package is it a depth of 3 km we might have let out as much as 3.5km of wire because the package drifts sideways a bit. Our deepest samples however come from only 5 meters above the seabed, so we have to wind the package up pretty quickly after we get them in case it pendulums downwards, or the ship drifts into shallower water. One final hazard to keep in mind while we're doing this is that the end of the wire is not actually attached to the middle of the winch!!! There is so much strain on the wire if the ship rolls quickly that it's just not possible to fix it there strongly enough... Instead it is simply held in place by always leaving a number of wraps of wire around the winch! If the current/wind is strong we can't reach the bottom with the 3.5km of wire we have due to drift, so we have to remember to stop before we let it go like a kid losing a very expensive balloon. This idea terrifies me when we're working late!

Anyways the joys of deep sampling are over for the first half of this cruise as we are now up on the East Greenland Shelf which is only about 250 m deep. The ice is also getting too thick for the ship, so we will continue to do out sampling using a small winch that we can take in the helicopter and lower small instruments over the side of ice floes. I'm including a couple of pictures of the helicopter hanger and the helicopter taking off. As you can see the weather is still a little grey....

My boss calls the guys lined up along the front of the hanger the 'bug-men' due to their funky helmets - you can see them better in some previous photos. I think they look quite cool, but I'm not exactly sure what their role is. They're always just standing there observing us take off. Apparently if it gets really rough, and the ship rolls too much for the helicopter to land normally, it has to lower a cable and be pulled out of the air and down on to the deck using a winch!! So maybe the bug-men specialise in that kind of activity. If so I hope I never see them doing anything other than standing around looking mean.

Right all for now. Not quite sure if I'll be out in the helicopter tomorrow or back on the ship processing data. Have to wait and see.
P~

Mephistomania

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:29:00 +0000

It's a good thing Paul has taken over my blog lately ;) as I haven't had much to write about. Nothing much going on here, have mostly been working hard. A few days ago the Norfolk & Norwich Festival has started though, so I had to get out and enjoy that :)

Last night there was a performance by the Friches Theatre Urbain, a French street theatre group, performing Mephistomania, the story of Faust. In high school we covered this story in German literature, but I forgot most of it except that Faust sold his soul to the devil in return for something. The story was told in several parts and we had to follow the actors (on stilts!) through town. It was hard to follow as they spoke half in French, half in English (and it sometimes took me a while to realize they switched language again hehe) and we couldn't always get near the performance either, it was really busy. We got a bit confused when they started talking about Helen of Troy and for a while we thought they were mixing up stories! But it turns out that she is actually part of the Faust story, as the personification of beauty.

Anyway... the performance was really spectacular with lots of fire and smoke effects. I enjoyed it a lot! Here are the photos I took...

It's Bank Holiday weekend here, but I think I'll have to work unfortunately. Never mind, I have a holiday coming up next week! I'm flying back to Tromso on Tuesday night, and then on to Longyearbyen on Thursday night to meet up with Paul for a few days. Very exciting :)

Ski-races and barbeque

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:49:00 +0000

Just a quick update after an afternoon of nice activities. Today was May 1st which is a bank holiday in Norway. We took a few hours break from the science this afternoon and had some ski-races, followed by a barbeque on the ice. The ski-races took place on skis that some of the crew had made out of some spare pallets in the hold - so they weren't exactly cutting edge! Still everybody welcomed the social opportunity after a period of hard work and the competition was pretty keenly fought!

After the races we had a really good barbeque out on the ice - we had to eat the food fairly quickly so that it didn't go cold, but it was delicious and we were all hungry from the exercise so that wasn't a problem!

It's easy to forget that we are actually 200km out to sea on days like this. The ice beneath our feet is only about 1-2 meters thick, and underneath it the old Greenland Sea is still 250m deep. If it weren't for the ice, there would be big blue-green waves and salty spray where we were walking today!

By late afternoon it was time to leave, so the ship was untied from the steel beams that had been used for mooring and we left the last human footprints that the bears will see for a while. As we are using up our supply of steel mooring points a bit faster than we anticipated we experimented with using dynamite to recover some of them from the ice! The beams are inserted into boreholes in the ice and filled fresh water which freezes them in place, so they can't be pulled out easily.

Right, that's all for now. It's time to go and do some final lashing down because now we really are heading for open water and we'll probably wake up in waves tomorrow morning. The forecast is pretty good though so we should be able to do work quickly and be back in the ice in a couple of days...

Another day on the ice

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:21:00 +0000

Had another fantastic day out collecting samples from the helicopter today. I was awoken up by the usual breakfast announcement and weather forecast over the ships intercom: Minus 15 and fog. I snuggled back under the duvet for at least an extra 10 minutes while contemplating the exact whereabouts of my thermals and thermos. Needlessly as it turned out, because it was too foggy to fly anyway. By midday the fog had burnt off though, leaving some stunning flying (and working) conditions. Which was lucky as my thermos turned out to have been incubating some coffee for about a week!

Anyways, we jumped into the helicopter at about 13:00 after having eaten our packed lunches on the ship, and headed towards the Greenland coast to try and bag some of the most westerly samples that we will collect. As we approached the coast, a distinct line was visible in the ice running north-south as far as it was possible to see in either direction (see picture below). This is the boundary between sea ice drifting slowly southwards over the East Greenland Shelf (left hand side ) and 'fast-ice' which is sea ice that is permanently frozen to the coast, and pinned in have run aground (right hand side). The ridge is the result of the moving ice being pushed up against the stationary ice.

Theoretically one could walk to Greenland from the western side of the ridge, as the ice doesn't drift and there are very few leads (areas of open water). In fact, there were so few leads that we couldn't find anywhere to deploy our instruments and had to turn around after searching for a while.

We did manage to land in the two other places we had planned to though, and both sites turned out to be quite spectacular, with big pressure ridges and blocks of ice, which had been pushed up as floes had collided.

The flying team is now generally made up of two oceanographers and one sea-ice specialist. Today Gorm came with Edmond and I so that he could make some ice thickness measurements. This basically involves drilling a hole in the ice with a very big and very long drill bit, then measuring the depth of the hole. You can see him and the drill bits in the the picture below. The ice is quite easy to drill through, so he can just use an pretty ordinary cordless drill at the end of that thing even when all the sections are stuck together.

The crew of the KV Svalbard were having yet another safety practise (these happen every couple of days, and I keep having to play the guy with horrible burns and smoke inhalation!) when we wanted to fly back to the ship, so we had to wait on the ice until the helideck staff had finished extinguishing a fake fire before we could take off to return - so we got to spend some time just admiring the scenery and drinking coffee which was really great. Usually we have be quite focused and work quickly when out on the ice so there's not much opportunity to absorb the environment.

When we returned to the ship we got to fly several loops at quite low altitude while Edmond took a video of the ship out of the window to be used in .... another a safety simulation for the crew! Still it's pretty cool to look out of the window and see people on the bridge at eye-level.

Ok well that's all for now. The helicopter is back inside the hanger, looking a little sad lashed to the deck with it's rotors pulled off. We're heading back out towards open water tomorrow so there won't be any flying for a while. We're all going to have to have a bit of a marathon lashing-down session tonight. I tend to slip into living in 'caravan-mode' when we're in the ice (leaving half drunk cups on tables, and not securing chairs) and that doesn't make for restful night if the ship reaches the waves while your in bed. It wouldn't be the first time my coffee table tried to climb into my bunk either...
Still, hopefully the weather will be kind to us!

Paul

Busy

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:28:00 +0000

I've been working very hard CTD'ing. Not much exciting to report though - just been stuck on the ship really. Here are some quick pics from yesterday!

Spring in Norwich!

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Today was such a beautiful day... temperatures over 20 degrees, a light breeze and lots of sunshine! After always needing several layers of clothing to go outside in Tromso, it's such a luxury to just go out without even a coat! :)

I went to town with Karla and we decided that it was a waste to spend time in shops with such beautiful weather, so instead we went for a walk around the cathedral. All the trees are in blossom there, very pretty!

Of course we weren't the only ones enjoying Spring time... :)

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm happy we went out and enjoyed today!

It's strange to think Paul is in such a different world now... scroll down for his pictures of a polar bear!

Polar bear

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:04:00 +0000

"Good morning good morning, it's 7:20 and there is a polar bear outside your door!"

The wake up announcement was 10 minutes early so that we had time to go and have a look at him before breakfast. Very well organised this ship :-). The bear was about 20 meters away, from the ship, so I could just take the photo from starboard corner of the stern. After wandering around for a bit and sniffing all the instruments it turned round, did a crap and wandered off. I guess he didn't think too much of us!

We're on the move again this evening. I haven't seen much outside as I've just finished up a long session in the salt mine (lab), but I felt the engines rumble into action a while ago.

There's just been an intriguing announcement: "There will be a social event in the officers lounge at 21:15, everybody's invited. Bring your luck and good charm and it will be an experience..." Guess I'll find out in a bit!

More Helicopter Adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:44:00 +0000

Here's another batch of photos of our helicopter exploits. We're doing much the same kind of thing every day - still every landing site is different! Unlike doing CTDs from a ship.

It was a couple of degrees cooler today and a little bit more windy too, which made it feel a lot cooler. I am using bare hands when collecting water samples to try to avoid contaminating them, so they get pretty cold if it's windy - have to be very careful to keep my gloves dry too. I have 3 pairs though and just move on to the next ones when one pair gets damp. We were collecting samples for the biologists today too, better not to get too much fluff from our gloves in those - takes them ages to work out what it is under the microscope ;-)

The photo below shows some cloud/fog over open leads in the ice. Heat flux in action! The ice insulates the warm ocean from the atmosphere, but where there are leads and the sea water is exposed it steams in huge clouds. If there is no wind, it's incredible, the clouds are almost frightening, they are so black and have almost vertical sides around the edges of the leads - don't really have a good photo of that yet.

When we got back to the ship today we found that the big (1km by 1km) multi-year ice floe it was moored to had broken in two. Not very good news for the sea ice scientists who want to study it! Tonight we're on the move again looking for another big one that will be tough enough to last a few days while it is studied. ie: lots of breaking through really thick ice.

Right, well I should probably either do some more data processing or sleep. Or possibly eat waffles. There's a waffle-iron and a big pot of batter put out in the mess every Wednesday night - nice idea eh? I didn't have any last week, so I might go and make up for it tonight!

Misty Norwich

noreply@blogger.com (Hanneke) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Hello!

I've been in Norwich for a week now, quite nice to be back and spend time with friends!

The things you do for a free breakfast... today if you cycled to university you got a free breakfast, but supply was limited and they started giving them out at 7:45. We were so keen that we actually got there at 7:45!! I don't think I've ever been at uni that early ;) It was nice though, a beautiful morning, we ate our breakfast outside. We saw a hot air balloon coming over the university as well...

I've been working very hard - sometimes I'm at uni for over 12 hours which is very unlike me ;) But I am nearing the end of my funding faster than the end of my research... I'm trying to work as hard as I can so I can finish as soon as possible. I'm so ready to find a "real" job sometimes, I even went to an open day about becoming a primary school teacher. Scary stuff...

Anyway, when I finally left university today, I noticed that there was a very spectacular case of ground fog. This type of fog is called radiation fog occurring on very clear, still days at sunset. The layer of fog was really thin, less than a metre in places! I tried to take some photos, I had to use my backpack as a tripod so I was a bit limited but I am still happy with the result! You can see people in some of the photos, they are taken near the student accommodation and I was not the only one fascinated by the fog.

Paul also sent me more photos and stories from the Arctic. The internet connection on the ship is very slow, so I'll put those online for him. Coming soon!

Update from the Arctic

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:40:00 +0000

They finally dished out computer passwords! It is very slow though, and hard to get to the computer in the evenings. All is well in the ice and everything on board is quite relaxed, so I think it is going to be a nice cruise. The journey over here was horrible though! The ship has no keel and rolls to about 40 degrees!

A couple of photos of the midnight sun...

We are now in thick ice with big pressure ridges, and the ship pretty much can't get any further, so they are going to moor to a big ice floe and start the 5-day drift station.

I saw my first Polar bear! :- ). Quite a long way away - but managed to get some photographic evidence of it. I think there are quite a few around, as I also saw some foot-prints in an iceflow that the ship broke throught. I wish I got a photo of that!

Today I got in the helicopter at about 9.30 and don't think we landed back on the ship until about 19:30. Lots of flying around to find leads for the ship through the ice, and also two landings for CTD's.

We had to spend some time following polar bear foot prints in one area to check the bear was not hiding near! Then we actually landed on his trail, so I got to put my boot in one of his footprints - very yeti like! :-). There's millions of the beasties, but don't worry - I'm fairly sure I'm not the slowest runner in the group!...

These pictures are from mooring the ship to an ice flow this evening.

I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow, so that's all my news for now!