Pirates

2006-01-15

It's been two weeks or so since I arrived at the base. Everyone and everything is settled in and the busy season of work is progressing pretty well. Last week we had some grotty weather for a few days. First it was warm but dumped a foot of snow, which is very unusual, then we had a couple of windy days, at about 25 knots which is enough to pick snow up off the ground and break it into tiny, chilling crystals that cling to skin and quickly cool any exposed parts. The wind and snow are responsible for the shape of everything out here, especially the little hills created downstream of all the buildings. The one behind the Laws is the largest and most noticeable, high enough to slide down on skis, but shallow enough to climb on crutches.

The Laws platform

The Laws platform from the wind tail

Everything's good and sunny again, with only a slight breeze, so people are out enjoying their day off by being dragged behind ski-doos on snowboards at terrifying speeds, or taking a more mellow meander around the perimeter on a pair of skis.

Ski-jouring, vehicles and garage in background

Work wise I'm mostly doing a handover where Simon, the outgoing me, tells me, the incoming Simon, all the quirks he's come up against over the past year. We're also upgrading a couple of our ancient machines into slightly less ancient ones, and making sure at the same time that we have good backups in case a vital logger choses to explode. Add to that a bit of programming to monitor the temperature of one of our cabooses, and some bits and pieces to transfer data back to Cambridge. The rest of the Piggot (the science platform I work on) has been engaged with raising the towers of one of our radars, the SHARE, and flying out to do field maintainence of remote magnetometers up on the continent.

This week saw two major social events: the start of the summer pool competition, which has already seen the loss of last year's champions, and the carnage of a pirate themed evening. I didn't have to do too much dressing up as I spend the whole time looking a tiny bit like Long John Silver anyhow...

Yarrrrrrr!