It’s a sad day here at Palmer Station, as 18 of us meet in the galley at 0800 hours for our redeployment meeting, which means filling out paper work about our departure from the station. I cannot believe that my 3 ½ weeks here will be over in exactly one week and some of my fellow travelers have been here over 4 months. Almost to a person, no one wants to actually leave Palmer Station, some of the crew leaving will return in the future, but for many of us this might be our final voyage from the station or even Antarctica. For me this experience is even a little hastened since I will be boarding the Laurence M. Gould (LMG) tomorrow and moving my belongings off of the station.
The LMG, which I will take to sea with the whaling group and then from Antarctica to Chile!
Luckily, I am not leaving just yet, I am just moving on the ship for an expedition with a whaling group from Duke University, more about that in the blogs to come. When the ship returns from the whaling expedition, their will only be 1 ½ days before the rest of the 18 members going north have to move aboard the boat. I will not be moving back onto station, because of the short turnover time. Being at station, but living on the boat doesn’t change much of my daily life, I’ll still come ashore and help the divers where I can, but I will have to eat all my meals aboard the ship.
18 of us meeting for redeployment back home, should have taken the picture from the other side so you could have seen the sad faces.
Add new comment