Avicenna Bay, Brabant Island

12/26/01
64 27 S
62 14 W
.5 C, 25 knot wind, wind chill -16 C
Blue sky with clouds on the mountains

Christmas Day was spent in Foyn Harbor on the NE side of Nansen Island. The Antarctic Pilot has the following about Foyn Harbor.

"Foyn Harbour affords anchorage, in depths of  from 27 to 37 meters, rock, but holding ground is poor and ice calving from a high glacier face is troublesome. Whaling factories used to moor in this harbour. The weather is reported to be generally good, but SE winds are violent at times."

Christmas Day festivities started around 11:30 with a great dinner of turkey & ham with all the trimmings and an amazing collection of cakes and cookies. Around 1 pm most of the science staff and support crews participated in a gift exchange. Numbers were drawn and the first person chose a gift from under the tree. The next person could either choose a gift from under the tree or take the one opened by # 1. If a person lost their gift they returned to the tree and opened another.  As gifts were opened and the collection grew, prize creations rapidly switched owners and dubious gifts remained with with the person who had opened them. It became obvious that many free time hours had been spent creating gifts and many hidden talents came to light.

PVC-guin, the first gift opened by Patricia Jackson, Palmer IT specialist, changed hands at least 3 times during the course of the event. Constructed by Scott McCallum with PVC core pipe liner, rigid foam and a large amount of electrical tape, it is a good example of the gifts created.

After the gift exchange a number of us toured the inner reaches of Foyn Harbor in the zodiacs. A rusting ship hulk, some wooden dories and mooring posts are all that remain of the whaling enterprises of the past. Snow squalls added to the Christmas spirit while we were out touring.

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Erin Fisher, the Palmer's lab manager, sports her Viking helmet as a zodiac heads toward the harbor.

(Click image for larger version.)

In Foyn Harbor the rusting remains of an old whaling ship is the largest of the remains from the whaling days. Visible above the railings are the modern masts of a sailboat anchored behind the wreck. The sailboat, John Lange, out of Southampton, UK , is part of a British Army mountaineering expedition that is climbing on the Peninsula. I don't have the URL for the expedition, but a sponsor's URL, www.oyt.org.uk painted in large letters on the hull probably has a link.

After landing on a small rocky beach to look at some of the mooring posts and an old wooden boat a curious Gentoo penguin came out of the water to check us out. During our zodiac tour we saw Gentoo, Adelie and Chinstrap penguins along with a colony of Blue-Eyed Shags.

(Click image for larger version.)

With snow squalls lowering the visibility, we returned to the Palmer around 5:30 pm and headed away from Nansen Island a few hours later.

Cheers,

Dave