Oden

The Oden had beautiful wood floors

The trip on the Oden was incredible. We boarded the ship on Wednesday night. It was quite cold, windy and snowy in McMurdo. The ship pulled up to the ice pier and used a man basket and a crane to transfer all of us from the pier to the deck. The original plan was that we would spend the night in McMurdo Sound, the Oden would help the fuel ship into the pier in the morning and then we would be on our way to Beaufort Island. Unfortunately, the ice pier had a section of ice that was protruding from the bottom and had the potential to damage the fuel ship. Therefore, the Oden spent most of the night trying to break this section of ice off the pier. This was only partially successful, so the harbor master in McMurdo decided to work on the pier using a drill and explosives. This meant that our trip would be cut a couple of days short, because the Oden would need to be back on Saturday to escort the fuel ship into the pier. Therefore, the decision was made to head straight to Franklin Island (where the majority of the science work needed to be done) and then stop at Beaufort Island if time permitted on the return trip.

We saw a lot of wildlife on our trip out of the ice. We saw seals, penguins (emperor and adelie), orkas and skuas.

We woke up the next morning off the coast of Franklin Island. Sven, our helicopter pilot, took 6 loads of people and cargo over to the Island.

Sven taking off from the AWS site

Our work included replacing the Whitlock AWS, which stopped working in 2005. The station was quite buried when we arrived. We dug down and removed all of the instrumentation. Then we installed a completely new station next to the existing tower.

Before picture of Whitlock AWS

After picture of Whitlock AWS

After our work was completed, we walked down to the Polenet (another science group working on the Island) site. This would save Sven a trip in the helicopter and it was interesting to see the the coastal portion of the Island.

Picture from the Polenet site

Picture from the Polenet site

The Island was covered in Olivine

View from the helo on the trip back to the Oden

We did stop at Beaufort Island on our way back to McMurdo. One of the scientists on board was studying an Adelie penguin colony located on the Island. The Oden drifted around the Island for a few hours while he completed his work. We saw a lot of penguins swimming and jumping in the water during this time.

The skies had cleared up and the sun came out for our return trip. We were blessed with more wildlife and beautiful views.