1st Feb Heading South

1-Feb

The weather today is calm, the sea slight with a rolling swell. We are heading due south and are about directly east off Banks Peninsular. Our engine is running sweat and there is a hive of activity on deck as the scientists and crew prepare their equipment. Everyone is making the most of the relatively warm weather and calm seas and people are still in shorts. It will soon be bitterly cold, I am reminded that any job that isn’t done now will otherwise take twice as long to do down under.

There are two engineers on board, myself as chief and Lindsay Battersby as second engineer. Our shifts are slightly different to the crew and scientists. We cover twenty-four hour watches and simply put the main engine to bed and set the engine room alarm system to UMS (unmanned machinery space) when we are not actually in there. We hope with our fingers crossed that things will run smoothly with minimal middle-of-the-night callouts.

Our engineering day typically starts with our first inspection rounds at 0730 hours followed by our own private ‘toolbox meeting’ in the engine control room, (really a good excuse for a coffee brew). Our typical day is taken up with repairs, all sorts of maintenance, playing at being plumbers, electricians and general Mr Fixits. At the end of our day’s work in the engine room, we simply do our last rounds, put the engine to bed, so to speak, and switch the alarms over to the duty engineer’s cabin. When not in the engine room, we carry a pager and when this vibrates merrily in our pockets, we jump into our boots, slip into our overalls and slide down the stair rails as fast as we can to attend to whatever the problem might be.
The RV Tangaroa “RV” stands for “research vessel”, like SS for steamship, and MV for motor vessel. RV Tangaroa is the New Zealand reserch vessel operated by NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmosphere). She is 70 metres long, nearly 14 metres wide and has a 7 metre draft.
For the scientific work to be accomplished in the Ross Sea, there are several laboratories on board. The main lab is below deck (on the factory deck). This is where fish caught in the trawls are identified, measured and preserved as samples if required.
On the trawl deck there is a dry lab, a plankton lab, and the Benthic Sorting Shed, which is the area where the ‘Benthic Babes’ hang out and where the sea floor dredgings are brought to for sorting through and identification. Next to this is the Bacteria Lab where Else and Stu do their microscopic stuff. Deep in the bowels of the ship is the Electronic Hub of the ship, the computer room that houses the multi beam echo sounder and other equipment.
Equipment on deck include the trawl nets and bottom dredges which bring up the fish samples and benthic things, the DTIS (Deep Tow Imaging System), CTD Rosette (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth Rosette) for bottom core sampling and the MOCNESS (Multiple Opening/Closing Net Environmental Sensor System).
I met Max Quinn today from the New Zealand Natural History Film Unit in Dunedin. He is on board to do a documentary on the voyage. He is a very interesting chap with a great sense of humour. It turns out he has affliction for cold documentaries and has some amazing cold experiences under his belt to tell us about. We watched the first of his documentaries - an amazing documentary of the great Alaskan sled dog race.
It looks like I will have to get my paints out well before we arrive in Antarctica. I was approached at “smoko” today by Mike, the bosun, and Glenbo, second crew boss.

“We hear you paint”, they said. ”Can you do us a painting from photos of our last trip to Antarctica?” ”What will it cost us?”

“Sure”, I said and looked forlornly towards my empty beer fridge. I had missed the duty free order when the ship was in port, so there was now every prospect that this two-month trip was going to be a dry one for me.

They got the picture and before I had even started the painting, my fridge was filled. My paints and brushes came out and my beer fridge got stocked up. So I was away painting Antarctica before I had even seen it myself.