Don's Log

   Don Perovich's log

3 August - 8 August: Transit to the Ice Edge
9 August - August 11: Across the Marginal Ice Zone
12 August - 18 August: A westward excursion
19 August - 31 August: Towards a Rendezvous with the Oden
1 September - 12 September: To the Pole
13 September - 26 September: South to Fram Strait
27 September - 1 October: South to Norway

   Transit to the Ice Edge

Wednesday 3 August
Hanover, NH
43° 43’ N, 72° 16’ W
Up bright and early for a long day of traveling from Hanover, NH to Dutch Harbor, AK. Fed Mica the cat one last time and left a note for Kathy and Dan. Little bit of fog in Hanover, but otherwise a sunny morning. Met Bruce in Lebanon at 0545 and it was off to Manchester. It was an easy ride to Manchester, not much traffic this time of day. Got to the airport at 0700 and checked in. I’m breaking from recent tradition and definitely not traveling light. My duffel bag weighed in at 52 pounds, my backpack at 28, and my computer case at 10. Two months worth of gear – I just hope the duffel makes it ok.

Beautiful weather, the plane has been here all night, what could go wrong? It turns out a lot. There was a small mechanical issue with the engine. The pilot had the wrong ID and couldn’t get through security. With all the delays some passengers decided to cancel and their checked baggage had to be found and unloaded. Finally we had to wait for the truck to push us away from the gate. We left 50 minutes late, made up some time and arrived in MSP 30 minutes late. Bruce and I raced from gate A9 to C16 and were able to board with no problems. I just hope the luggage made it. On the bright side I got a first class upgrade from MSP to Anchorage. The miles zip right by in those big first class seats.

In Anchorage, we met up with Tom and Jeremy. Bruce and I hit Quizno’s subs to get some fuel for the last leg of the flights. The plane to Dutch Harbor was a twin engine prop, with free earplugs to deal with the noise of the props. The flight was pretty full – so full in fact that we had to stop in Salmon Bay to add on fuel. Not to make it to Dutch Harbor, but to be able to make it back to Anchorage if Dutch Harbor was fogged in.

The flight approach to Dutch Harbor is pretty exciting. There are steep, verdant mountains all around, low clouds above, water below, and directly ahead a runway carved from the mountainside. A spectacular location for a nice, safe landing.

The Healy is ready for us and we are quickly given our room assignments. Its room 205 for me. It’s a full boat and we are all tripled up – just like freshman year of college. Each room has two bunks and a couch/fold-out bunk. The rooms are surprisingly spacious. Each person has a locker, there are two desks to share, a sink, and a couple of file cabinets that serve as excellent dressers for storing clothes. Adjacent rooms share a bathroom containing a toilet and a shower. All in all a very nice arrangement.

Russian Orthodox Church in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Look closely at the church spire, there is a bald eagle atop it.
Town eagle.
Icebreaker Healy in port, Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
Members of the Ice Morphology Science Team, Don Perovich (CRREL, center of photo), Jeremy Harbeck (UW), Bruce Elder (CRREL). At left of image, Chief Scientist for this cruise Dennis Darby (Old Dominion Univ.).

Thursday 4 August
Dutch Harbor, Alaska
53° 54’ N, 166° 31’ W
After a good night’s sleep, its time to get to work. Bruce and I went into the hold looking for our boxes that were loaded in Seattle. Not only do we find them, we discover that they are very accessible. There is a bit of unpacking and rearranging to do. The idea is to organize the gear by task and stow it in the lab for quick use. A big part of polar research is making and refining lists. You want to avoid a situation where you are a thousand miles from anywhere and realize you forgot a screwdriver. A little bit of obsessiveness is useful.

We had our first science meeting after dinner. It is an incredibly diverse group, both scientifically and geographically. There are researchers from the U.S., Sweden, Norway, Canada, Japan, Venezuela, Argentina, and Russia. Scientific interests range from seismology to sea floor cores to sea ice morphology. It should be a fascinating cruise.

First observations! Don measures the incident spectral solar irradiance using the field-portable “ASD” spectroradiometer. This instrument measures the amount of light at different wavelengths (colors).
Summer in the Bering Sea: gray skies and gray seas.

Sunday 7 August
Aboard Healy Northbound in the Bering Sea
65° 08.688’ N, 167° 46.830’ W
We reached Nome this morning. The Healy is parked about 6 miles offshore for helo operations to bring the Jamstec J-CAD buoy aboard. Its foggy enough that Nome is only occasionally barely visible. Tom and Jeremy set up the calibration lamp this morning, while Bruce and I got the ASD ready for some incident irradiance measurements. Another excellent lunch- cheeseburgers and fries.

After lunch it was time for some measurements. The ASD spectroradiometer was calibrated using Tom’s fancy setup, then it was up to the flying bridge to measure incident. As always, the ASD backpack and chest computer made quite the fashion statement. In addition to the incident, an ocean reflectance was measured.

The fog has rolled in and our speed has slowed to 13 knots. The ocean and the sky blend into one monochromatic gray mass.

Monday 8 August
Aboard Healy Northbound in the Chukchi Sea
71 13.951 N, 165 49.591 W
We crossed the Arctic Circle as we slept and have transited the Bering Sea to the Chukchi Sea. The Ice Team is pretty much all ready to go and we are just finishing up the details. After breakfast it was up to the helo deck to be sure that the camera pod mounted properly on the helicopter. It does and we are good to go. Bruce and I did an inventory of different batteries. In all cases there are twice as many batteries as we think we need. Of course now I wonder if we shouldn’t have taken four times as many. It’s a long way to the nearest hardware store.

After lunch seven of us got together to talk about doing an ice watch from the bridge. The group is Bruce, Tom, Jeremy, Takashi, Kazu, Hiro, and me. We will be using a web-based system to log the ice watch directly on the ships computer. Ice or no ice we will be starting the ice watch tomorrow morning at 8 AM.

We also began planning for the major buoy deployment site. It will probably be Site 7. There will be 11 different buoys to deploy, with a total weight of over a ton. We hope to do it in less than 6 hours. It should be very challenging.

There was a science meeting tonight. We should be reaching our first site tomorrow morning. There probably will be some ice, but probably not enough to get out on.

On any Arctic expedition, a key concern is food. The food on the Healy has been great and I’m a picky eater. The food is so good that I haven’t eaten any of my junk food yet. In fact, at least until we start getting out on the ice, I’ve had to make an effort to minimize calories. For example, I've been sticking to cereal and fruit for breakfast, even though the eggs, hash browns, pancakes, and pop tarts are tempting. Right now there are tons of fruit and salad, but that will probably only last a few weeks. There are ample choices including lots of pasta, which I really enjoy. Saturday night was pizza with mozzarella sticks-delicious.

Our cruise track to date. (August 9, 2005)

To Across the Marginal Ice Zone