March 2008: Aboard the icebreaker Amundsen with climate research scientists

Polar expedition blog

But when four score individuals are huddled on the ice for almost an hour, guarded against polar bears by several men with guns and against the cold only by their parkas and Baffin boots, you appreciate just how fragile is the bubble that protects us from hypothermia, frost bite and possibly death.

Amundsen still a prisoner of the ice

Another day and we’re still stuck in the ice. For more than an hour last night (it might have been closer to two but I went to bed), the Amundsen’s propellers pushed and pulled to no avail with all six engines running flat out.

3/21/08: Icebreaker crew running out of options

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – The ice around the Amundsen is beginning to resemble wooden beams riddled by shipworms or, for you land-lubbers, Swiss Cheese.

Yet despite scores more perforations drilled this morning in the floe, the Amundsen is still stuck fast.

So crew and scientists are again wrestling with the heavy, stinky, gas-powered augers to drill more holes through the nearly metre-thick ice along the ship’s port side.

Hours of toil for a ship-length of progress

With several assaults the ship probed the snow-topped ridge. Then it backed up a half-kilometre or so and charged ahead with all 15,000 horsepower. The Amundsen bucked over the ridge, came down clear on the other side, and stopped dead.

For all that sweat in drilling hundreds of holes and for the thousands and thousands of litres of fuel expended, we’d moved forward about a ship-length.

But we know now that we won’t be stuck here indefinitely, The ship can be moved by some combination of such devices as flooding the ice with warm water, shifting ballast or fuel between tanks and – in the extreme – transforming ice floes into Swiss cheese.

Fantastic feast

Lunch and dinner throughout the week are equally impressive culinary feats, especially when you remember that the Amundsen normally receives fresh fruit and vegetables only every six weeks when there is a crew change. Ingredients for the meals come mostly from stores and huge walk-in freezers originally stocked when the ship left Quebec last July 23.

So the variety and quality of the cuisine is truly a tribute to the inventiveness and skill of chef Jacques Beaudet and the two cooks, Joelle Dube and Fabien Castonguay.

Here's just a sample of main dishes from the past week – blanquette de veau, sole meuniere, linguini Alfredo, turkey tetrazini, pork filet a la Dijonnaise, asparagus quiche and – believe it or not – pizza (either meat or vegetarian) with French fries. Plus a choice of two desserts every day, including tarte au citron, tarte au sucre, tapioca and a decadent treat called gateau crunchi.

Getting onboard with Earth Hour

As the onboard representative of the newspaper championing Earth Hour, I had raised the question of the Amundsen observing Earth Hour with numerous people right after coming on board two weeks ago.

Few had even heard of the event. Those who had were skeptical — of the purpose and of the value. The captain noted that it would still be quite light here at 8 o’clock on March 29 because of our northern position.

As well, more than one scientist pointed out that they were here in the frigid Arctic actually working hard to understand climate change and living on a vessel were every watt of electricity, every ounce of fuel was carefully husbanded.

“Those people down in Toronto will turn off some lights for an hour and then go back to driving their SUVs to pick up milk from the convenience store and wasting electricity with old beer fridges in their basements,” one said.
...
But I’d be dissembling if I didn’t also confess that I returned home to find that I’d left all the lights ablaze in our cabin.