Land ho!

We have finally seen land and some of it was Russia! We came right through the Bering Straits and Bryon and I got very busy as birds and mammals picked up. The fog lifted just a bit so we could see 2 countries simultaneously. This was a busy time on the bridge and lots of photos of foggy land were taken.

to run from weather and kill some times, we made our way to a beautiful fishing spot

We continued on and made such great time that the berth we were to occupy was unavailable so the captain decided to "park" the ship in a pretty little Aleutian cove and give the crew time to fish. A few small halibut were caught but everyone had a great time. It was sunny - something we have seen little of - so everyone tried to soak up as much as we could.

fishing on the fantail

sunbathing in the Aleautians

Next stop....Dutch Harbor.

Hey, it's time to eat again!

One thing about the Healy, you will never go hungry. We have meals at 0700, 1100, 1700 and "mid-rats" at 2300. Cooking for a group like this is a challenge, so thought i'd include a few photos of our galley. Too tired to write much more...

waiting in line for food...yet again!

Our head chef, always happy!

 

 

One of the galley tables - note that it doubles as an operating table.

 

 

Food scraps go into a disposal called the "red goat". Sometimes silverware goes in by accident as well and then makes it to the wall of shame.

what happens in the arctic when you don't recycle

A few of my favorite things....

Look for the little ship - that's us by the island. The yellow line is our course to Dutch Harbor.

 Yesterday was an amazing day for sightings - lots of whales so we were on the bridge all day and well into the night. We had a gray whale come up right next to the boat and leave a big cloud of mud in his/her wake. No photos as most animals were far away but glad we finally saw an animal we could id. A little sad when they announced, in pirate voice and ship's bell ringing, that we had crossed the arctic circle. The officers on board took off their red hats and replaced them blue ones. 

We are steaming as fast as we can (18.5 kts!) toward Dutch Harbor, a not so picturesque  town where we face the prospect of being stuck for multiple days due to multiple storms. Everywhere you go on the ship right now you can hear people talking about the end of the trip, what junk food they're going to eat, how they can't wait to see their families (most of the crew has been on the Healy since May), how they can't wait to see a tree, etc. But mostly it's dreaming about favorite things that you've missed. I am really missing home but am not dreaming of food at all. This did get us all talking about some of our favorite things on the ship. Two of mine have been seeing the Northern Lights and polar bears. So here are a few photos of those things (note: these photos are from crewmember Shu).

The water is glowing in this picture because the ship had it's ice lights on during the night.

This was a phenomenal evening - we had the moon, northern lights and sunset all at the same time!

Northern lights and aloft con - shot taken with a long exposure which is why you can see the stars so well.

Sun at last!

We had forgotten how great it was to see the sun! It was a really beautiful morning and we went back through some ice. We almost didn't care that we didn't even see any birds all morning. I'm really tired and the web is really slow so just a few quick picks. We have one last mooring to deploy in the very early morning - pretty much back where we started. Then we boogie west, and around the corner to the Chukchi and Bering Seas. Our sightings should really pick up then but so will the weather - there is a huge storm in the gulf of alaska (30'+ seas) and one that will be in this area but so far we are dodging all the really bad weather.

It's good to have friends in high places....

 

As I think I told everyone, we have some water issues on board. Laundry has reached critical mass but have no fear the Coast Guard is here. Today was the day they flew our missing part in to us. The C-130 has a routine training run so they came to us. Once again even this operation required lots of waiting....something we have all gotten very good at. We launched our RHIB to stand by to retrieve the part. We finally heard the plane overhead, they circled lowered and dropped a flair as a marker. They then circled back and dropped the part almost right on top of the flare - pretty impressive. Of course they couldn't resist a few more passes - some very close as you can see. We should have things fixed very soon but it will take a few days to build up our water supply again.

Gray daze

This is where Bryon and I do our visual survey observations.

 You would think that standing and looking at nothing all day would be easy but I assure you it is not. As I think I wrote (I'm really not sure anymore - the days are blending into one) I am now watching for marine mammals and recording my observations. So far my data sheet is pretty sad....even the Coasties were commenting on how desolate it's been. We went way north and were only 15 miles from Canadian soil so Bryon and I thought we'd have a great chance of seeing lots of birds and maybe belugas or bowheads. After a late night writing a report, I drug my tired self out of bed at 5:30 am and went up on watch. Bryon was a little smarter and slept thru his alarm. We packed it in at around 3 this afternoon. A few birds and that's it.

This new sign appeared last weekend on the scientist level of the ship - a very popular way to pass the time on board is humor and jokes. If only we had a sauna on board. And how 'bout the arrows to the bars and lounges!

My colleague Josh did put some sonobuoys in today. These are floating microphones or hydrophones that you toss into the water and they telemeter the acoustic data back to the ship. We have a computer terminal up on the bridge so I can see what he's recording and we can coordinate our acoustic and visual observations of marine mammals. All he could hear was a Shell Oil company ship doing an really loud acoustic survey in the area. I'm sure things will pick up. As we move further west we should run into many species as they migrate south for the winter. Keep your fingers crossed!

Walking on (frozen) water.....

We went pretty far north, and are now heading southeast deeper into Canadian waters.

It was a pretty noisy night - crashing thru the ice is a noisy task. Bob decided to stop when we got close to a 9 mi wide piece of ice we were watching on the satellite images and thus the CTD team was back on (I'll explain what they do later this week). So we basically parked the ship in the ice for the night if you can imagine that. They mount special lights on the ship to monitor the ice. I was really tired but it was almost clear nite so those of us on the day watch tried to stay awake for the northern lights....no luck. I crawled into bed at around 1:30 and guess what I missed - A POLAR BEAR CAME RIGHT UP TO THE SHIP....and no one woke me! People got good photos so I'll have to post them later. We found out the next day that the Russian icebreakers actually feed the polar bears - really not a good idea. They are curious enough without baiting them. I did get to see 2 polar bears far from the ship while cruising thru the ice (the picture was not very good) so that helped.....a little.

Besides waking up to that disappointment, the clouds rolled in and we could no longer get good remote ice images. We got to the spot we dubbed "ice island" and guess what - no island. Just patchy old ice. We then basically bashed our way back to where we started and finally found a piece of ice that looked ok for the met station. It looked pretty small and we were all pretty sad that it looked like our ice liberty was not going to happen. The CG is very very careful on the ice - we had a big meeting where they explained that the rescue swimmers would go first and drill a few bore holes to check things out. Then the met team would go and install their station. The captain then told us "and then we'll assess the stability of the ice and determine whether there will be ice liberty". Hmmmmmm - things were looking up but we didn't want to get our hopes too high. We all watched the rescue swimmers flag off the floe, and the safe spots got bigger and bigger. The announcement then came that ice liberty was on! Everyone lined up to go down the companionway and there we were - standing on a floating piece of ice in the Arctic. Truly amazing. The crew actually played a short game of touch football. Everyone seemed refreshed but really tired if that makes any sense.

Goldie, the little stuffed retriever from Nye Beach Montessori, snuggles with Elizabeth, our local Inupiut. Yes, even Goldie got to step on Arctic ice.

 We are now heading further east and hope to see some more wildlife. I seemed to be jinxed and they are only seeing animal life when I am NOT on watch!