South from Chile

Holy moly, the past two weeks have been quite a ride. There is so much to catch you up on. I will just start to do that little by little, post by post. I am all settled into Palmer Station now, but when last we spoke I was just leaving Punta Arenas, Chile. So let's back up and take a step toward getting you caught up....

For our last night in Punta Arenas, we slept aboard the LMG. (Oh, and a correction from the last post: I've since learned that the US Antarctic program does not actually own the two icebreakers it operates on the peninsula--just leases them.) This was handy for me since I am working in Cargo at Palmer this season. At McMurdo and South Pole cargo is transported mostly by plane, but Palmer is a marine station, so I began my ongoing crash-course in marine cargo operations. At first this just consisted of observing the movement of a RHIB that had been transported north for the winter back onto the ship for its return to Palmer for the summer.

Speaking of my job...I was hired in August by the Peninsula Logistics Coordinator (a full-time position with the program) as Palmer's Cargoperson for the summer, to be working under an on-site Cargo Senior. A couple of weeks after I signed the Cargoperson contract, I heard through the grapevine that the woman who hired me had quit the program. So--I was assured by the station manager when I reached out--things were going to be a little chaotic but manageable. Then, as we were starting the flights south to Punta Arenas, the guy who was supposed to be Cargo Senior apparently decided he was too overwhelmed by the chaos side of things and he decided at the last minute not to get on the plane. Long story short, the station manager ended up convincing me that under the circumstances, the best option would be for me to step into the Cargo Senior role, be able to complete turn-over with the winter Cargo Senior to start learning the job, the winter Cargoperson would stay an extra few weeks, and the program would fast-track the hiring of a summer Cargoperson to take over the job I was supposed to do. So I got on the boat with a 3-inch stack of operating documents to read to learn about the much more desk-, paperwork-, and computer-system-heavy job I am now going to be doing. Eek!

But I wasn't about to bail as well, so when the time came, on a day too windy for the LMG to leave the pier unassisted, a tugboat came along to drag us out to sea...

...we watched Punta Arenas fade off into the distance...

...we did a life boat drill in case of having to evacuate the ship (and by the way, for those of you who know him, doesn't the guy second from right look EXACTLY like my brother, in this picture?)...

...and off we sailed into the Southern Ocean.

Well, to be more accurate, we weren't in the open ocean to start with. The trip from Punta Arenas to Palmer Station generally takes four days: one day navigating the straights and islands of Tierra del Fuego; two days for the crossing of the mighty Drake Passage, aka the "Roaring Forties" and the "Furious Fifties" (those numbers referring to latitude) between South America and Antarctica, famously the most consistently tumultuous seas on the planet; and the fourth day on calmer waters again, navigating the rest of the way south along the Antarctic Peninsula.

While we were protected from the open ocean those first 30 or so along Tierra del Fuego, we were lucky to see a whole bunch of Commerson's dolphins!

But we knew the calm waters wouldn't last, as the weather forecast did not look fantastic. While we could, we visited the outside decks of the LMG, appreciating the epic sunsets.

That's probably enough for now...
Next post I'll talk about the ship itself before it makes its voyage across the Drake!