Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 05:35:44 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jason Goodman <sci5@knorr.whoi.edu>
To: seadiary@MIT.EDU
Subject: Ice and indigestion
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970207050850.9288C-100000@mike.knorr.whoi.edu>
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50 36' N, 49 38' W
Temp: -2 C, Winds: 10 m/s
Seas: Disneyland

  Last night, Bob asked my watch (the 8pm-4am watch) to stay up and check
to make sure the Sea Beam (a high-tech sidescan bottom-profiling sonar)
was giving data which agreed with the PDR (an ancient strip-chart
recording depth sounder) as we went over the continental slope.  We sat
around waiting to get there, when around 1 in the morning, I heard a
slushy, grinding noise as if someone were rubbing wet sand across the side
of the ship.  Then the ship stopped dead, and I noticed it had stopped 
rocking.  I put on warm clothes and went outside, to find we were
surrounded by ice, as far as the eye could see.  Not little chunks, but
foot-thick pancakes the size of mattresses, with raised edges where they
ground against one another.  You must understand, this ship doesn't have
an ice-strengthened hull, and could only push the pancakes aside very
slowly.  The possibility of getting frozen in was very real.  The bridge
crew were playing searchlights over the scene, trying to find a way
through.  After a couple of hours of maneuvering, we were able to go back
the way we came.
  This morning, we talked to NOAA and got a map of the ice cover for the 
area.  We had run into a tongue of ice extending across our planned 
cruise track.  We've spent an entire day detouring around it.  
Fortunately, the center of the Labrador Sea is ice-free, so this won't 
happen all the time.
  The bridge said they saw a seal out on the ice, but I missed it.
  Once we left the ice, the seas started getting really awful.  The 
swells are about 8 feet again, but they're coming sideways now, so the 
ship rocks much more.  I was pretty sick for most of this afternoon, but 
was able to escape it by sleeping.  Has it occured to anyone that oral 
medication for seasickness is a bad idea, since seasick people throw up?  
Anyway, I'm over it and feel fine now.