#ShipLyfe

On the ship life is so different to home. So this little post is not really about anything in particular but about living on a ship.

The Bridge complete with fluffy captain chair

Physically the ship is a pretty cool place to live. You got pretty used to the constant humming of the engines (when we arrived back in Hobart and the engines were turned off, it felt eerily quiet) and floor vibrations. The Bridge (where the captain and mates drive the ship) was 5 floors up from the galley and mess. I have to say my legs got a pretty good workout running up and down the stairs all day. According to my Fitbit, my record is 136 flights of stairs in one day. Phew! 

A sea door

Sea doors cover every external door and are watertight. They were usually kept open except in rough conditions when they didn’t want us going outside. Every doorway has a small lip, in the event there is water inside the ship it will keep it contained. But, it means you need to be more alert going through doors for tripping and head banging hazards. The doorway from the stairwell into the D Deck was notorious for catching my foot – making me trip and look like an idiot who can’t use doors. There is a rule on ships: One hand for the ship, one hand for you. Meaning hold on or you’ll go flying. There are also handrails everywhere, including the shower. Which I was so thankful for! The shower didn’t have a glass screen, only a curtain which opened up into the small bathroom. The first week I clung to it in every shower. I didn’t wash my hair the first week because I was afraid of using two hands to shampoo. Luckily the swell got smaller; otherwise I might never have washed my hair…

My saviour: the shower handle 

Trip hazards for uncoordinated people like me 

Going to the gym is a bit challenging. Treadmills are way more exciting. It’s the strangest sensation. The swell makes it feel like you’re walking up and down small mountains that randomly try to throw you off sideways. When I ran, I felt like I was tempting fate and always kept a free hand just in case. Even when we were out of the swell, the ship still bumps around crazily while ice breaking. It’s also extremely hard to balance when doing squats.  

On the ship, not only are you always moving. But you are living in close confines with people you have never met and need to work and live with for 7 weeks straight. Luckily the amazing people I met on this trip were fucking fantastic!! We all seemed to get along and strangely I wasn’t sick of them by the end (hopefully none of them were sick of me).

The best bunch of people in the world Image by Mana Inoue

The captain Benoit is very superstitious. You absolutely cannot say the word ‘rabbit’ around him, or something catastrophic will happen. Maybe the world as we know it will simply end, I didn’t try it out, so who knows?  It reminds me of Susan and her ‘no-banana’ rule, or our ‘thank the whale gods’ celebration. I’m starting to notice seafaring types are all a bit superstitious…

Susan would have disapproved of the bananas but would thoroughly agree with the Tim Tams 

When i was down at Casey one day, i had an awesome chat with some of the guys stationed down there over the summer. Basically, we came up with a list of quite a few things that the AAD don’t put on the brochure about travelling to Antarctica. Like the amount of blood noses you get. Basically, you blow your nose so much (your nose runs so much in the cold) you start blowing blood. Or the dryness of your skin; my hands cracked, my neck and chest were red raw and feel like tissue paper, fingernails start to crack on their own (mine didn't - thank god). On the other hand, the lack of humidity was great for my puffy hair. There is also the spread of illness between people living in close quarters, everyone uses the same tongs to serve their food, the same handrails to walk down the stairs - There was a cold buzzing around the ship since we left Hobart. I never got it, but lots of people did.

An artsy photo of some icicles

I learnt a few nautical sailor things over the trip. The cadet Rhys taught me how to plot our position on a chart using a fancy double ruler. Even today, ships are supposed to navigate by charts, not by electronic GPS. I plotted our GPS coordinated on the chart using this symbol:

I also learned how to take a bearing. We had a knot tying day to learn lots of new knots. Unfortunately, I can only remember two: a monkey fist and alpine butterfly. I also learned two cool new nautical terms: 'Iceblink' and 'Seasky'. Iceblink is when you are sailing in open ocean and you can see the white light of the sea ice reflected in the sky. Seasky is the opposite, when you are sailing in sea ice and can see the blue of the open ocean reflected in the sky. Very cool.

Iceblink

Seasky

Killing time playing Hide and Seek - all hiding in the broom cupboard Image by Julie Janssens

And most days, when there was no science to do, we spent our time playing cards, board games, accusing each other of being werewolves, debating whether or not we were dead and haunting the ship, and just hanging out outside- looking at the most amazing place on earth.

Anchored in Newcomb Bay