NBP to Punta Arenas

On Tuesday 3/24, the RVIB Nathaniel B Palmer arrived to Palmer Station. Well, as close as it could safely get!

In a few chaotic hours, we used a station zodiac to get all the cargo we needed to get on board, say way too many goodbyes, and move the 11 of us who were leaving station on board. Shockingly quickly, I was seeing Palmer from afar...

...and then not at all, as we began the long sail north. It was beautiful, as always, being out on the water as we began motoring up the peninsula.

The NBP is big enough that no one ever has to sleep in containers in the hold, thank goodness. I shared this super-cozy room with one of the scientists leaving Palmer. (Hilariously, that TV has cassette tape and VHS players.)

And about 24 hours after our departure from Palmer, the seas suddenly started feeling rough and we made our way across the Drake in moderate seas.

I was taking anti-seasickness meds the whole time and so was feeling super sleepy and woozy and the  hours and even the days totally melted together.

On Saturday we made it to Punta Arenas, Chile, but because Chile's borders have been closed to international travelers, we were not allowed to leave the boat. For three more days we stayed on board, doing what we could to offload what could be offloaded without us leaving the vessel, reading, playing games, watching movies, and taking advantage of kind efforts of people on board to entertain us, such as one of the engineers giving a tour of the engine rooms:

...gazing at Punta Arenas in the beautiful weather and wishing we could go for walks through town...

...said a distant hello to the LMG, docked on the opposite side of the pier, from which position the hazardous waste containers on board were moved over to the NBP for eventual travel north...

...and went to several science talks. It was really wonderful to get to interact with the scientists who had been at sea for a couple of months researching the Thwaites Glacier (the fastest-melting area of Antarctica) and to hear presentations on their projects.

As the days passed, I found myself spending more and more time walking tiny circles around the 01 deck of the NBP just to get some fresh air and movement. (The boat has a gym but the treadmill was broken.) One evening I was out there with this ailing bee, which I felt sorry to see suffering, but which was also a notable sight for me after half a year too far south to see any insect this size.

Our last evening on the boat was absolutely gorgeous, making me ache to be able to step off the boat and start the month of exploring Chile I'd been planning as a post-contract adventure.

But of course...that is not possible with what is happening in the world right now, and the disappointment of that lost travel adventure is more than balanced with my gratitude that I was able to be heading home to a family that is still safe and healthy and has everything it needs right now.

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!