back that thing up

The ice breaker Oden arrived and docked today.  I was there when it happened.  I didn’t actually even touch the line as a line handler this time because there were about 15 people too many volunteering.  But it was good to get an idea of what to expect for when the bigger ships come in.  It was an awesome experience.  It had already broken a lot of the ice in front of the pier but still had to do a reverse-forward, reverse-forward ramming progression to get up to the dock.  Oh, and it backed in.

I was about as close as was safe to where it was coming in, I was actually the closest to it.  It was an awesome, yet eerie experience.  This enormous and powerful ship backing up breaking and pushing BIG blocks of ice and coming right at us standing on a huge ice pier (more on that later).  While it was a little farther out it was hard to tell if it was moving at all.  It didn’t look like it, but if you looked at the ice in front of where it was heading, it was colliding violently and being pushed around even way in front of it.  It’s the only way you could tell it was moving.  But as it got closer it was very apparent that it was moving.  The noise of the ice breaking was a scary noise that you’ve all probably heard in movies right before someone falls through into a lake or something, well it was just like that.  The fact that I was standing on ice also was a little nerve-racking.  And we could feel the ice moving everything.  It was very subtle, but we could definitely feel the boat causing the ice to bump into and crush against the ice pier we were on.  It was awesome.  An incredible experience.  Putting a huge line over an anchor on the dock was anticlimactic.

So a little information about the ice pier/dock.  (I just saw that Wikipedia has an article on this too, man, you really can find ANYTHING on the internet…the page is HERE.)  If you don’t feel like reading that, I will try to sum it up.  The pier is meticulously made by filling in a contained area with water and allowing it to freeze, over and over.  There are layers of metal making a mesh in there too.  That is done until the block of ice is about 22ft thick.  Then it is covered with dirt for traction (trucks and bulldozers drive on this thing) and to keep the sun from melting it.  They are able to repair it when it cracks and drain it when it forms puddles.  It is all very sophisticated.  The guys in charge of the line handlers told us that the dock we were on was about 4 years past its expected lifespan…that happens with a lot of things here.  Either way, you should read that wiki, it is pretty neat and the page is certainly more informational than me.

A few more notes on the ice breaker.  It looked pretty small when it was on the horizon and even when it was making the turning basin but it looked HUGE when it got closer.  And it is the smallest ship coming in here.  I don’t know why I thought this, but I had pictured a blue trail and open water where it had come from.  That’s not the case at all.  It really only breaks the ice and it just looks chunky where it’s been instead of flat white.  I have been told that it takes a storm or strong wind to blow the broken ice out.  And if that happens then there’s a good chance we’ll see a lot of wildlife from the water, potentially even whales.  I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for that.  Here’s a picture of the Oden from the ice pier:

After my brief stint as a line handler, my supervisor was asked by the telecommunications supervisor if we’d want to help run cables again. Of course I agreed and so the afternoon was spent running cables.  It was much easier this time. We were up outside of town and so the cables didn’t go through conduit, they just ran across the ground.  I thought that was weird, but there were other cables up there already.  Apparently they have some heavy-duty shielding and don’t require conduit.  Someone estimated we pulled about 2,000ft of fiber and copper cable and we knocked it out pretty quick.  Afterwards we took a moment for some pictures.  Here’s one of me posing with the unofficial Antarctica flag (there is no official flag).  I am the epitome of smooth: