Oceanography!
The chain and Glasgow behind us, we headed north. The weather window was marginal, but we were determined to give it our best shot. On the morning of 16 February at 05:00 AM we left the Firth of Clyde and made our way north. Unfortunately, luck was not on our side and we soon found ourselves in the middle of a force 10 storm. We got as far as the Faeroe Islands before the sea became unbearable. The Faeroes are a possession of Denmark and sparsely populated. A port call was not possible, but they did offer a degree of protection. On the north-easterly side, they project out of the sea in places as sheer rock cliffs several hundred feet high. This is an ideal place to avoid the high winds and rough seas. We “hove to” in the lee of these islands for a few hours while the storm dissipated.
A bit of a digression is warranted here. The nautical expression to “heave to” usually means that in rough weather, the ship is turned with the bow into the wind and you ride out the storm. It’s the safest way to wait for rough weather to pass. During my time at sea, I have found the term used to describe many protective measures to minimize the effect of bad weather. Generally it is used in the traditional sense (turn the ship into the wind.) However, it is sometimes also used by the uninitiated, and even sometimes by experienced sailors, in reference to other actions. So, while maybe not nautically correct, we were hove to in the lee of the Faeroes. A minor difference, but I am are trying to keep the story as accurate as I can. Details like this should be clarified. If “to heave” to is interpreted in the general sense of trying to avoid or minimize the effects of bad weather, we did it a lot in the winter of 1989.
Whatever the interpretation, we left the protection of the Faeroes around 09:00 AM on 10 February and made our way to the survey area, north of 70 degrees and in the Arctic. After almost four weeks, we had made it. We were ready to do what we had set forth to do . . . Physical and Chemical Oceanography.
Finally, we had reached our destination. We began with a number of CTD stations on 20 February at 1:00 PM. Again I will leave the scientific interpretation to those more knowledgeable than I. From the perspective of the technicians, it was a relief to both get a chance to apply our skills and to find that we had escaped the rough weather. The sudden change was uncanny. It seemed that we had crossed some invisible line . . . into somewhere where the seas were as we remembered. We were working along the ice edge. That probably played a part in it. We were also far enough north that the low-pressure systems that were responsible for the violent storms dissipated before reaching us. Whatever the reason, life returned to normal on an oceanographic search vessel. We collected CTD data, water samples, and did all the real-time analysis of this information that we normally performed. We were actually doing what we had set out to do a month earlier.
During this time we worked our watches. For myself, this consisted of four-hour shifts split between looking after the CTD computer, drawing water samples and analyzing them for nitrate, phosphate and silicate content. Although I was primarily the "computer person", my formal education and my early work experience was in chemistry. There was a need for someone to help with the chemical analysis and I was the logical choice.
We collected CTD data and did other oceanographic research. For many of us, this was as far north as we had ever been. It was cold. Exceptionally cold at times. I made reference to the "land of the midnight sun" earlier. This indeed was the case.
However, by now it did get dark at night, although only for a few hours. Had we made it to the survey area earlier we would have had daylight for 24 hours. As it turned out, by this time of year the longest days of winter were past and by 10-11 PM, darkness had set in.
One of the most striking sights was the formation of Arctic ice. In the Greenland Sea, the water first freezes into small pieces, or platelets. This happens along the ice edge and farther north it solidifies into one solid mass of ice. We were working as far north as we could and often we made our way several miles into this ice formation area. The most northerly point of this cruise was approximately 78 degrees latitude, about 600-700 miles from the North Pole.
By now time was running out and we had exhausted the time allotted for research. It was time to go home. We headed south from the survey area and our destination was Halifax. We made our was southward toward the Denmark Strait, this being the shortest path to home. The weather co-operated, and finally things were looking up.
This was soon to change. When we reached the Denmark Strait we encountered a problem. There was ice everywhere. To the south, east and to the west. The Denmark Strait was completely blocked with multiyear Arctic ice, and this presented a serious danger to the ship. The only option was to avoid it . . . and how else could we do so other than heading back north? And we did. On 2 March, we made our way north and then east, around Iceland, and south toward home. By now we were below the Arctic Circle and unfortunately we were starting to encounter bad weather and rough seas again.
Last updated on Thursday, 12 April 2007