May 9, 2015

Some technical problems

Helle preparing Saturday night dinner with lemon pie.

Even on Saturdays you can have problems. The electric drive for the logger winch did not work, and having an operational winch is essential for performing deep borehole logging. In the afternoon Dorthe and Sepp solved the problem, and tests were fine. Tomorrow the logger will go into the deep borehole.
Pat, with assistance from Mathias and Joel, has rigged the GrIT carpet sled in such a way, that it can accommodate our dismantled garages and 5 Hercules pallets worth of cargo.
During service of one of our Flexmobil tractors, the steering ceased to work. This could become a serious problem for the traverse as we depend on all tractors being available. Sverrir was working so long and hard, with assistance from Pat, that he came late for our Saturday night dinner. We really hope the problem will be solved tomorrow.
Helle and Paul prepared Saturday night dinner. Everybody washed from a basin (we do not have running water or shower in camp), dressed up and partook in a fine meal with sushi, fried duck fillet and lemon pie. It was a nice and cosy evening.

What we have done today:

1. Making space for 5 pallets of cargo on GrIT sled.
2. Repaired the electric drive for the logger winch. Sent probe down to 100m and broke through ice bridge at 87 m.
3. Dismantling and packing carpenters garage. Only arches and bottom frame remains.
4. Running radar and GPS at points of the strain net around NEEM.
5. Service on both Flexmobils. Troubleshooting steering on Flexmobil with yellow shovel.
6. German surface snow sampling.

Weather: Mostly thin, broken cloud cover. Temp. –16°C to -26°C, 3-5 m/s from S and SW. Visibility: Mostly 1-3 km. Few light snow showers and slight fog.

FL, J.P. Steffensen