27 September 2015 Sunday Sleuthing

Journal

Cruise Day 50

Speed 0 knots (kts) (on station)

Course n/a°

Location Canada Basin, ~395 nm north of Barrow, Alaska

Depth 3873 m

GO DEEPER DISCUSSION: (see previous journal for the questions.)

In addition to the aloft conn for steering the Healy through ice, and the ability to back and ram through tough ice (which necessitates special rudders that won’t be damaged doing so), a polar icebreaker has additional traits that make it stand out from other Coast Guard cutters. First of all, in the Coast Guard, a cutter is any ship in the fleet 65 feet or more in length. This is actually a clue – icebreakers don’t cut the ice once it is beyond a few inches thick, but have hull shapes that let the bow ride up onto the ice, which is then broken under the immense weight of the ship. To help with this, icebreakers are overpowered. That is to say that they have engine power far beyond another ship of comparable size. The Healy has four 10,000-horsepower engines, and can deliver 30,000 horsepower to the twin 16-foot propellers (having four engines adds a back-up.) Along with the special hull shape and extra power, icebreakers have very strong hulls with lots of extra reinforcing. Finally, the Healy is built to operate in very low temperatures (down to -50° F.)

Open ocean — The view today is open gray ocean with a few orphaned bits of ice here and there, something we haven’t seen since August 18 on this cruise.

TODAY’S JOURNAL:

We’ve left the Arctic ice pack in our wake, and are set up on a full sampling station today with horizon-to-horizon open water. Plenty of signs of the Arctic persist, though – there are a few widely scattered bits of ice in the open water, escapees from the pack to the north. The water itself has an odd, greasy look to it that close inspection reveals is due to the presence of ice crystals permeating the top few inches of the ocean. The water is on the cusp of glazing over – on the one hand any cold snap could form a thin layer of new ice, while on the other hand any wind would cause waves to stir the surface layer and disrupt ice formation. I heard rumors of a storm that might be moving in tomorrow, so perhaps I’ll have something to say on the weather conditions tomorrow. While water sampling and analysis is as always an intense business, folks seem to be finding some relaxation time on a pleasant Sunday about the ship. We are just within the fuzzy edge of our satellite that carries better internet and some armed forces TV channels. My roommate and I watched a little football, but it was frustrating as we’d get a couple of minutes of broken reception or even blank screen for every minute of the game that came through. Trying to load web pages is similarly frustrating – just when it seems to be working a message will appear saying “no internet connection.” This should get better, though, when we depart this station to travel farther south into better coverage.

For today’s journal, I have a little detective work for you. Following are photos of items found around the ship. There are three levels of questions you can try for:

1) What are these objects for? 2) What are these objects called? (Fine to research online etc.) 3) What is the connection between these objects (more detailed than “they are all on a ship”, etc.)

Enjoy!