Journal Entry
While we're finishing up our last training sessions, we're already gearing up for our work. Here are pictures of how we drill holes for our SCUBA divers.
We drive down to the ice in a Tucker (the orange car), a piston bulley (the red one) and a tractor with a big drill
A tractor pulls a giant drill for our big hole (called a redrill)
The drill goes in
We shovel the ice coming up from the hole and watch for the water
Our first hole was about 17 feet deep.
We finally hit water and it came gushing up. We had to stay clear but also build a wall to contain it
Then we use nets to clear out the remaining ice
Then we get a hut - we call them apples or tomatoes - and we pull them over the hole. (Sometimes we get sturdier huts which we like to call fish huts)
With a little back and forth, we line it up and have a hole inside a hut.
With that we are ready to dive!
Our group of divers have already gone out and successfully completed their check-out dive. Stay tuned and tomorrow you'll get to hear Kevin's and Julie's stories of their first dives in Antarctica as they go for their second dives.