Off the Ship, Drilling

Well, that was exciting. 9am we met on the bridge to go over the flight
brief. The captain, XO, some other officers, pilot, and flight crew, and
Ice team were all there. Who's going, what we're doing, where we're
going, assess fitness of just just about everything, and more before we
go. The Coast Guard has a strange (to me) way of assessing fitness. The
person leading the flight brief says a category, and everyone involved
holds up some fingers indicating how much risk is associated with that
category. Highest number is recorded. Everyone gets a vote, even me.
They are essentially asking for assessment of the fitness of things like
the weather, the aircraft, ice conditions, stuff I don't have a clue
about. I just go with the flow.
Immediately, things start to happen. before I can grab my gear and get to
the hanger, the helo is already being rolled onto the flight deck and
getting fueled. So as soon as I get ready, we're off. The ride in the
helo was really cool, the weirdest thing being the fact that I could never
tell ho high we were. Looking at the ice, there is no frame of reference,
because big ice looks just like small ice. I thought we were a few
hundred feet up, but I found out later we were about 1500 feet off the
ice. I had no idea.
The ice station went smoothly, we took parts of six ice cores back to the
ship for analysis. They check for algae species, zooplankton, and do some
stable isotope analysis of the core samples.
Load up, take off, 25 minutes later we are back on the ship.
It was a good day, but I was exhausted. First time I've been able to get
a full 8 hours of sleep since I've been working the night shift.
Today will be less exciting.
Steve