Rime of the Modern Mariner

[This post written 6/9/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp -4C; wind chill -5C]

Adventures are creatures of extremes. Fittingly, we have had a day filled with highs and lows.

The sea was calm, and the winds light, and therefore I felt good. 🙂 After breakfast, I donned my many articles of clothing, stuffed a couple of handwarmers in my pockets, grabbed my camera and went out to 0 deck, where Steve Rock and his team were mounting and lowering the multi-beam sonar. If all went well (and it did!), this mechanical marvel would yield an image of the seven-eighths of the iceberg that lay hidden beneath the water. I snapped pictures for an hour, glad for the handwarmers, and then in a glorious instant, even gladder for the sun as it burst out from behind the clouds. Its warmth on my cheeks felt better than the most luxurious silk, the best cognac, the sweetest flowers. I stood there grinning like an idiot, and wouldn’t have traded places with anyone on earth. Strange as it may sound, those minutes were worth all the cold and dark. Odder still, they could not have happened at all without the cold and dark that came before them.

A short time later, Steve E. came down to get me, saying that they were going to try dropping the GPS beacons with the plane. So up a deck I went, to the helopad, where I spent another hour, took a quick break for lunch, and then went back for more while we waited for the sonar team to finish up, and Steve and Kim put the finishing touches on the plane. On deck, the wind was barely a whisper, and I watched, half mesmerized as we circumnavigated the iceberg again and again, sometimes in deep shade, sometimes in the buttery sunlight. What am I looking at, I thought? A huge chunk of ice in the broad ocean, but far more than that. An oasis of life. And a piece of the world no human being has ever touched or even seen before. The ship is a noisy, smelly, very human article, and standing on it, it’s easy to be consumed by it and lose track of what and where we really are — small, lucky creatures in a good place, surely one of the purest places on the planet.

As if to prove the point, just off the stern, the flukes of a whale appeared. Shortly, we saw that the whale was part of a pod, and for a tantalizing half hour, we watched them spout and dive. “Those are Southern Right whales,” said Adam Jenkins, who has spent more time in these parts than the rest of us and ought to know. “They’re rare — hunted nearly to extinction. We’re very lucky to see one.” A moment later someone shouted, “Hey, penguins!” Sure enough, a flock of penguins had joined the whale, fishing. I shot pictures one after another, but got nothing identifiable. Couldn’t tell what type of penguins they were. Maybe another day. That’s a beauty of this trip. There will be other days. Many!

Then the guys were ready to fly the plane. Kim started the little motor and warmed it up. Sunshine blazed along the flank of the iceberg. The wind was still behaving. As planned, Kim guided the plane through takeoff. Up it went, beautiful and bright against the iceberg and then the sky. When it got high enough, Kim transferred control to Steve E. who was stationed in the ship’s ice tower, the tall lookout used for finding a path through fields of ice. All went well. Then as Steve banked the plane to bring it back over the top of the iceberg, a control cable in one of the ailerons snapped, and suddenly the plane was in the water.

It was an awful wreck. The engine snapped off and sank on impact. The wing broke in half. See above as they pulled it in pieces from the water. Well…we have a second plane. And there will be other days.

Tags: Icebreaker // 2 Comments »