Visit from the NBP

In mid-November, a rare thing happened at Palmer. The Lawrence M. Gould (LMG) is our usual supply ship and the one that brought us down here in October. But the program also leases an even larger vessel, the Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP) that typically traverses the peninsula with scientists whose projects require that they be on boats rather than using Palmer as a land base.

I posted a picture of both the vessels docked in a row on the pier at Punta Arenas when I was first coming down here. But it's been almost 20 years since they were both at Palmer at the same time. But due to the need to drop a couple of scientists off at Palmer at a time when the LMG happened to be here, we got a dual LMG/NBP visit. It was pretty cool to see.

The ships tied up to each other and put down a gangway between the two that we could cross to take tours of the NBP.

It's only a few dozen feet longer than the LMG, but it feels SO much bigger, and is definitely taller, so that it gave a really nice novel view of Hero Inlet.

 I guess I'm just really not great at staying in one place for a very long time, because it even felt jarring and amazing to me to look out at the same view that we can see from Palmer, but just be a little bit higher and out in the water than we are usually. At the time I had only been at Palmer for about six weeks, but it had been such a crazy six weeks it had felt MUCH longer, and even the smallest change in perspective at that point was very, very welcome!