A few interesting things happened today during my shift.
Firstly, WE CROSSED THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE! This was very exciting as I
can now say that I have crossed both the Arctic and Antarctic
circles, and actually both within 6 months of each other due to my
impromptu trip to Svalbard last summer. Just as we were crossing the
60S latitude band, it also decided to snow, making the experience
that extra bit special and much more fitting to the occasion.
Unfortunately the snow didn't linger for long, but it was the first
snow I have experienced this trip (and this year), so it was pretty
exciting for me. Now that we have reached such a southerly latitude,
night time is now also practically non-existent. When I awoke and did
my usual morning exercise/aurora check, it was twilight - the sky had
an amazing deep blue colour to it, and you could clearly see the
light to the south, where proper 24 hour sunlight shines.
The second exciting thing to happen was that we saw a Japanese
Research ship (not the whale hunting one I believe - probably the
Japanese equivalent to what I am on). I've been told that the aurora
has passed two round-the-world sailors during the voyage but I had
not seen them, so this was the first man-made object (and obviously
the accompanying human beings besides those onboard our ship) that I
had seen for 11 days. More amusing was that I actually thought their
ship was an iceberg. Another of the night-shifters tapped me on the
shoulder and pointed out the window and said something to me, which I
mistook for him saying iceberg, probably because we should be
spotting the first one pretty soon. Obviously I rushed to get my
camera, ran outside, and immediately saw that it was ship (a white
one may I add). I felt like a right prat! Pretty funny though. I gave
them a quick wave, and then had to run off to take some samples.
Lastly, we had our weekly safety "muster". Now last week I got to
miss this most exciting of events as I was busy sampling so this was
my first muster of the trip whilst at sea. The horn (if it's called
that) blasts out 7 short sounds, followed by one long one, and then
this is repeated, signaling that we need to don our warm clothing and
life jackets, grab our survival kit, and head for the heli-deck where
a register is taken. And that is it! It's not really exciting, but it
is necessary in case something does go wrong and we need to evacuate
ship, plus it's a good excuse to wear our warm clothing (not that I
need one as I have been wearing my massive down jacket when I venture
outside for the past few days).
Current Latitude: -60.8547
Current Longitude: 139.8450
Current Air Temp: 0.1C (-4.6C with wind chill. It did reach -8.9C)
Current Ocean Temp: 1.64C
Wildlife: Absolutely nothing today
Sea Sickness: No problems. The ocean is very flat
Over and out
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