Monday, November 5, 2007:
Day 7: Water rations run dry and ROV diving at Sideshow
I awoke this morning to find out that our water rations had run dry... how could it have come to this!!!
No water equals no milk.
(continued...)
You would think in a place like Antarctica there would be water all around to drink but this isn’t the case. Even the ice that we chipped and melted wasn’t really suitable for drinking. Some of the foods that we brought were dehydrated and require water before they could be used and this included the powdered milk. Because of this I ate the Raisin Bran cereal dry... I was the one who ordered the cereal before we left McMurdo and I was determined to finish the box before we had to fly back. My calculations figured that I needed to eat two cereal bowls a day in order to finish the two boxes I ordered, even if this meant eating it without milk.
After we all finished breakfast it was on to drilling! We had been Hotsy a hole at a dive site called Sideshow all night so that we could dive Video Ray but we still needed to drill our navigation holes. Since we pre-drilled our holes the day before we only had to drill two flights (six feet) until we punched thought the bottom of the ice. But over night our drill must have out grown Stacy and Mindy and they required some help to reach to drill head.
Either the drill grew taller or we srank over night.
After the awesome girls finished drilling two navigation holes we were on to diving! The instant we splashed Video Ray into the water we could see some of Dr. Dayton’s experiments. One of the other things Marcus and I noticed was our navigation system seem to be working more accurately than the previous day and we were getting some pretty consistent locations and depths. With Marcus behind the controls, Stacy behind the sciences and myself behind the navigation we were off to explore Sideshow. While these experiments were not considered lost they haven’t been seen since Stacy’s last visit to New Harbor in 2004. Between Marcus and I we were able to navigate and map over 30 of Dr. Dayton’s experiments. The ROV mission was quiet successful and our navigation system seems to be working well, our next job is to make the navigation system work with SCINI.
A happy team after a successful dive and mapping mission.
After the day’s work we all went back to camp to enjoy a nice warm meal and discovered our water had been resupplied.
This helicopter came and resupplied our water, and just in time!
During the ROV mission Mindy was so kind and put a turkey in the oven. A whole turkey! It was like Thanksgiving came early this year. Not only did we have turkey we had mash potatoes, gravy, veggies and stuffing, all the good stuff! After what seemed like a long day of drilling, piloting and navigating this meal was satisfying in our bellies.
Marcus and turkeylurky sharing a moment.
This meal was worth the wait.
No water equals no milk.
(continued...)
You would think in a place like Antarctica there would be water all around to drink but this isn’t the case. Even the ice that we chipped and melted wasn’t really suitable for drinking. Some of the foods that we brought were dehydrated and require water before they could be used and this included the powdered milk. Because of this I ate the Raisin Bran cereal dry... I was the one who ordered the cereal before we left McMurdo and I was determined to finish the box before we had to fly back. My calculations figured that I needed to eat two cereal bowls a day in order to finish the two boxes I ordered, even if this meant eating it without milk.
After we all finished breakfast it was on to drilling! We had been Hotsy a hole at a dive site called Sideshow all night so that we could dive Video Ray but we still needed to drill our navigation holes. Since we pre-drilled our holes the day before we only had to drill two flights (six feet) until we punched thought the bottom of the ice. But over night our drill must have out grown Stacy and Mindy and they required some help to reach to drill head.
Either the drill grew taller or we srank over night.
After the awesome girls finished drilling two navigation holes we were on to diving! The instant we splashed Video Ray into the water we could see some of Dr. Dayton’s experiments. One of the other things Marcus and I noticed was our navigation system seem to be working more accurately than the previous day and we were getting some pretty consistent locations and depths. With Marcus behind the controls, Stacy behind the sciences and myself behind the navigation we were off to explore Sideshow. While these experiments were not considered lost they haven’t been seen since Stacy’s last visit to New Harbor in 2004. Between Marcus and I we were able to navigate and map over 30 of Dr. Dayton’s experiments. The ROV mission was quiet successful and our navigation system seems to be working well, our next job is to make the navigation system work with SCINI.
A happy team after a successful dive and mapping mission.
After the day’s work we all went back to camp to enjoy a nice warm meal and discovered our water had been resupplied.
This helicopter came and resupplied our water, and just in time!
During the ROV mission Mindy was so kind and put a turkey in the oven. A whole turkey! It was like Thanksgiving came early this year. Not only did we have turkey we had mash potatoes, gravy, veggies and stuffing, all the good stuff! After what seemed like a long day of drilling, piloting and navigating this meal was satisfying in our bellies.
Marcus and turkeylurky sharing a moment.
This meal was worth the wait.