We have been sailing on the N.B. Palmer for a couple of days now. I have been trying to catch up with the McMurdo journals and have not finished, but thought you might twang to know where we are now. It was sad to say goodbye to McMurdo; I take glorious memories from this exotic land. Here are Aimee in the front and Mingxi in the back like good sentinels, scrutinizing the views.
We filled the decks trying to observe our departure
My first impression of theN.B. Palmer is that it is a gorgeous boat with a fantastic crew. Working away on the journals I am not aware of the big waves out there. I know they will get bigger, but even at this level, for me not to be seasick indicates that the Palmer sails very nicely. Here is what the departure from McMurdo looked like on February 20, 2011 at 12:00 as scheduled.
A warm welcoming meeting with the Captain and Mates before departure.
We all met in the conference room to meet the captain, mates and engineers, who welcomed us to their beautiful vessel. They briefed us on what we can do to be safe on the boat and what we should avoid. We tried the survival suits that would help us in case something were to go wrong, very wrong. I made a video showing how to get into a suit, but our bandwidth for sending videos out of the boat is limited. I will post the video once I am back on land. Meanwhile enjoy Eric on his gummy suit.
Eric wearing the survival suit (gummy suit) as practice
Besides wearing our suits, we went into the lifesaving boats. The chief mate told me they roll a lot when in the water and that they carry 'granola bar toe food', which he said is not very appealing. I hope I do not get to find out about that.
I would skip a ride on the survival boats, if possible, but it is comforting to know they are there in case of an emergency.
Nice interior of the lifesaver boat, but it will tumble as a peanut in water.
We will conduct a fire drill every week, in which we will assemble (muster) on the conference room with our lifejacket and gummy suit.
At noon exactly, the boat began to leave port. We were all excited to be finally sailing and nostalgic of a magic land that some of us will never see again. We populated the decks in an effort to get the last views of the station, and of some wildlife on the ice.
Here is a view of the station from the highest deck next to the bridge.
View of McMurdo Station from the 5th level deck
And remember all that ice I said had gone away? A lot had melted, but we encountered some of the remains. I wish we had tome to stop nod solve tha big puzzle in front of us.
Huge ice slabs on our way, a challenging puzzle. More than an ice breaker, the Palmer was an ice pusher
And what a beautiful hue of blue is visible under the surface of the ice. I felt invited for a swim on such a nice water. I guess it will be another time.
Now I understand why we use blue for cold in lab visualizations.
We did see some animals on the ice. Here are some seals
A seal on the ice as we pass by on the Plamer
And from a far, far distance we saw orcas. I would not post seals or penguins seen at this distance, but orcas get a different treatment on this blog because I am excited that I saw orcas on their natural element! Bu the way, I rather call them orcas than killer whales. We do not go to the zoo an day look at the killer lion, or the killer seal, do we? or call ourselves killer humans...
Very far away, but still an orca
And another toy of whale, which might be a finn whale. You can see the different shape of the fin between the orca and this other whale. The fact that the fin is small on the second case suggest to me it is a finn whale, but I am no expert.
After checking my identification guide I am almost certain it is a Antarctic Minke Whale and not a fin whale, since fin whales are not typically found around the Ross Sea.
Here is a panorama that shows Castle Rock on the left side and McMurdo Station on the far right. And to think that we were on top of that rock formation!
A view from the Palmer with Castle Rock on the left and McMurdo Station on the right. That was an amazing hike the other day.
Here is a view of Castle Rock with the ice on the water
Castle Rock from Ross Sea.
Ice begins forming on the surface of the water as soon as there is no wind. You can see on the following picture that there is some sort of a skin on the water as if it were made of scales. This is newly formed ice.
A double sun on the Ross Sea. The water has an icy skin.
Water skin made of icy scales.
We will move away from land in the next few days. We will return at the other side of the entrance to the Ross Sea. Here is a view of mountains that we are leaving behind.
Wonderful view from the N.B. Palmer