Lessons of the Arctic

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

A victim of cabin fever, freelance journalist George Tombs emulates Patrick McGoohan's character in the classic television series, The Prisoner.

OTTAWA – There was barely time for a visit to the bar Thursday before a Bandierante aircraft from Kenn Borek Air arrived on the ice airstrip having dodging the freezing rain which had scrubbed an earlier flight. A little more than 24 hours later, Air Canada delivered me back here.

More reflection on the experience will no doubt come with time. But here are 10 valuable lessons I learned during three weeks aboard the Canadian Coast Guard’s icebreaker Amundsen:

1. It’s not a good idea to use the last dregs in a helium cylinder to inflate a weather balloon. They’re likely diluted with nitrogen and the radiosonde won’t ascend.

2. Drinking coffee before a long helicopter flight is a really, really bad idea. Unless there’s an empty water bottle.

3. Muskox meat is available free at Sachs Harbour on Banks Island¸ providing you have some way to take it away. The muskox are killed for qiviut, the unshrinkable underwool that’s eight times warmer than sheep’s wool and which sells for high enough prices to recoup shipping costs. The meat doesn’t.

4. Cabin fever is a real danger. The photograph shows journalist and Conrad Black biographer George Tombs shouting “I am not a number” as he unsuccessfully tries to escape from the airport at Sachs Harbour. Burlap bags of qiviut can be glimpsed behind to his right.

5. The afternoon crew break at three o’clock is when fresh-backed cookies appear  in the Amundsen cafeteria. The chocolate chip are better than anything in Toronto at any price. Trust me on this. 

6. The best Arctic clothing and gear is made in Norway, except for boots where Canada excels. The really neat Norwegian item are the armoured gloves used by the fishery workers, which were great when hauling rope and grasping frigid metal parts out on the ice floes here

7. The pilots and planes of Kenn Borek Air deserve their stellar reputation for flying in dicey conditions at both ends of the Earth.

8. Running boards are a wonderful idea that should be reintroduced. Try getting on or off a snowmobile with an artificial hip and Baffin boots and you’ll discover how useful that step-up is.

9. Woman truly get the chance to show their mettle in the Canadian Coast Guard, from “matelots” (seamen) through logistics officers up to captain. It’s a much better career choice for a young woman than the Canadian merchant marine. You’ll have to trust me on this as well. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.

10. Home is best.   

Make that a double

STILL ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—“The flight from Inuvik has been cancelled. All those people who were scheduled to leave will still have to vacate their rooms. Please see me about finding some place to sleep.”

That was the unwelcome inaugural announcement by Dave Barber, the new chief scientist on the Amundsen research icebreaker.

The ever-efficient Amundsen office staff did find me — and the half-dozen others also marooned here — a place to lay our heads for the night.

But it could be more than one night. The forecast is for the poor weather to continue, after three weeks of nothing but sunny skies.

Such delays are par for the course in the Arctic. As well, we were a day late getting here three weeks ago because of mechanical problems with the charter flight that brought a crew change and a new team of scientists to Inuvik.

So the Arctic is simply getting that day back. Luckily it’s bar night on the Amundsen, and I believe new stock arrived on one of the two charter flights that did make it in earlier today.

 

A steady hand on the wheel

AT THE HELM CCGS AMUNDSEN—For 20 exhilarating and anxious minutes yesterday, I got to steer a 6,000-tonne icebreaker knifing through the Arctic ice floes.

Photo by Amundsen captain Lise Marchand

Peter at wheel -- Star science reporter Peter Calamai stares ahead intently as he tries to steer the icebreaker Amundsen on a steady course.

Like most things that you watch experts do, it was nowhere as easy as it looks.

The anxiety was mostly on my part. The Amundsen’s captain Lise Marchand, who was taking my photograph, remained her usual placid and reassuring self.

The real helmsman on that watch, Vincent Gagnon, stood beside for a few moments to emphasize some of the trickier points of the job but soon wandered off.

Then it was an aging reporter alone against the hostile frozen Arctic Ocean.

(So long as you forget about the captain, quartermaster and another bridge officer, not to mention Vincent and his replacement Eve Guilbault who later took back the wheel.)

For anyone who knew what they were doing, this would have been a cakewalk. The Amundsen was retracing a path it has broken earlier in the day through relatively thin ice. We were making a mere 2.6 knots (“slow ahead”) to give scientists and crew time to clean up from a messy coring of bottom sediments. No one wanted that mud tracked back to our home berth in the ice. There was very little wind.

All the amateur helmsman had to do was keep the Amundsen centred in the already broken track. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Remember the old joke about stopping the Queen Elizabeth II liner? Start before you know you have to.

Well it’s true with a 98-metre-long vessel as well, even one that’s just puttering along well below the potential top speed.. When you turn the wheel everything happens in slow motion.

PHOTO BY AMUNDSEN CAPTAIN LISE MARCHAND

Vincent Gagnon, one of the Amundsen's real helmsman, keeps his gaze on the ice while Star science reporter Peter Calamai looks down to check the ship's bearing on an engraved brass scale on the wheel.

The problem is that it keeps on working. I can’t remember whether the correct term is understeer or oversteer but you crank the wheel 20 degrees to port and the bow of the ship just keeps going straight ahead. Then, slowly the whole mass starts to swing left. Before you realize it, however, you’ve pointed one of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Class Three icebreakers right into an endless vista of unbroken ice. Maybe not that thick ice, but an awful lot of it.

Crank back frantically to starboard and wait anxiously for the response. Again, in slow motion, the bow swings back towards straight ahead … and then keeps on swinging, so now the ship is crunching along the right-hand margin of the path cleared that morning.

So for the first 10  minutes or so, the Amundsen slalomed its way south of Banks Island in the Western Arctic. If any of the other crew or scientists not on the bridge noticed, they were kind enough not to say anything.

Once the vessel was going more or less in a straight line, I got cocky and began chatting about photographic gear with Captain Marchand who, like me, shoots with a Nikon D200 single lens reflex camera.

The ice floes had other ideas. Something nudged the side of the ship (or maybe one propeller whacked a frozen chunk) and suddenly we were doing a marine imitation of a dog walking, at a five-degree angle off the perpendicular.

I’m fairly sure of that statistic because the person at the helm faces a panorama of electronic information displays, at least three showing the ship’s bearing. That bearing is also engraved on brass circles down at the centre of the wheel. Strangely I found myself looking more at that old-fashioned display more often than the modern LED readouts.

After 20 minutes I asked Eve Guilbault to please take over the task. Already my shoulders complained about keeping them tensed and my eyes ached.

Real Coast Guard wheelpersons may have to keep their concentration at a peak for an entire four-hour watch and often operate in the foulest weather. Whatever they’re paid, they earn every penny. And more.

 

Left on an ice floe with guns and chicken-baited traps

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Stig Falk-Petersen, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, finds his chicken bait didn't lure any tiny amphipods to a trap lowered through the ice.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – Here are the names of the four men and two women left behind today on the ice south of Banks Island: Luc Michaud and Pascal Massot, both of Laval University; Stig Falk-Petersen of the Norwegian Polar Institute; crewman Philippe Guillot; Andrea Rossnagel and Alexis Burt, both of the University of Manitoba. The parka-clad party rapidly dwindled to invisibility as this Coast Guard icebreaker shrugged free of its most recent frozen parking spot and sped west.

Nobody waved goodbye.

That’s because this isn’t some deep-freeze version of marooning Captain Jack Sparrow in the film Pirates of the Caribbean. The plan is for the sextet to get back on the ship when the Amundsen returns to its starting point this evening.

The scientists on board for the current leg of the 10-month climate-change expedition asked the Coast Guard to shift the ship several kilometres to the west so they weren’t fouling their own nest by plunging a steel grab bucket into the ocean floor about 200 metres below.

At the same time, other researchers were getting anxious because several days of trawling through holes in the thick floe had netted little of consequence. So the sextet stayed behind to continue that heavy-duty ice fishing.

They have radios, food, water, snowmobiles, a Bombardier snow-grooming machine with a large heated cab and two tents erected earlier on the ice for shelter if the ship had to be evacuated.

The shore party (floe party?) also boasts a higher ratio of Canadian-certified gun-handlers than most groups who venture onto the ice from the Amundsen. Three of the six are qualified to try to bring down a polar bear with a 12-gauge shotgun or .308 calibre rifle.

Despite such assurances, right now with a wind gusting between 10 and 15 knots it feels like minus 35 C out on the ice.

Stig won’t mind. Stig is my cabin mate. He’s a tall, trim, 58-year-old marine biologist from Norway but he leaves here garbed in multiple layers and looking like a dark version of the Michelin tire man.

“I don’t like to be cold and on the ice it is always cold unless you dress right,” he  explains.

Stig is a senior scientist with the venerable Norwegian Polar Institute which began life in 1928. His curriculum vitae (.pdf) runs for 25 pages. He could sit back and let more junior researchers do the grunt work.

Yet Stig is forever finding reasons to go out on the ice even though he doesn’t have to. Today’s fishing party is a case in point.

Stig’s research centres on tiny, tiny critters known as amphipods which he’s been trying unsuccessfully to lure into ultra-fine mesh traps baited with chicken (I am NOT making this up.) The nets used by the ice-fishing party have holes far too large to catch any amphipods.

Yet Doctor of Philosophy Falk-Petersen volunteered to spend at least nine hours in strenuous physical labour on the frigid floe with the nearest real comfort – this ship -- 3.6 nautical miles away, I’ll report back later after everyone is safely back on board.

UPDATE: After 11 hours on the ice, our sextet is safely back on board the Amundsen, triumphant in netting the first Arctic cod larvae of the season. A ruddy-faced Stig says it was cold but a "wonderful day."

The Amundsen in words and pictures

Here's an audio slideshow that gives an overview of the mission, life aboard the Amundsen and the work that his being done aboard the ship. You can watch a larger version here.

Scientists disentangle expensive gear

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Heidelberg researcher Denis Poehler gets an atmospheric gas detector ready for moving day on the Amundsen.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – Denis Poehler is happy. The German researcher is heading back to the University of Heidelberg (via a Vancouver stop-over) and he’s shipping DOAS back too.

DOAS stands for Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy, a technique for measuring atmospheric gases at levels as low as tenths of parts per billion. Heidelberg boasts the world’s most sensitive long-path DOAS apparatus, which has been churning away for weeks from an upper level of this icebreaker.

More importantly, Denis is taking valuable data home as well, those ultra-precise measurements of the atmospheric levels of ozone, bromine oxide and – just possibly – iodine oxide as well. These may reveal just what causes the concentrations of ground-level ozone to plunge precipitously during the spring here.

“The quality of the data exceeded my expectations,” Denis confided this afternoon as he was packing DOAS up for moving day Thursday.

The German PhD student isn’t alone. Seven other researchers (and three journalists) are scheduled to leave the icebreaker Thursday. It’s called a mid-leg change because it falls half-way through one of the six-week legs into which this 10-month expedition is divided.

A better name might be the “has-anyone-seen” change.

The laboratories in research institutions on land have long been communal affairs, with researchers borrowing equipment and reagents from the next bench or the lab down the hall. This spirit operates even more in a floating research set-up, because there isn’t a central store to call on and courier delivery isn’t really an option.

But that means everything has to find its way back to the original owner when a charter aircraft is due to land on the ice in less than two days time. Often one of the biggest hassles here is finding the original packing cases, which have been squirreled away in the most unlikely parts of the ship.

(Although it’s not widely recognized, even among the British scientists on board, the Amundsen is actually the latest manifestation of the TARDIS, the time-travelling machine of Dr. Who which is much larger inside than out.)

Another danger of moving days is that vital apparatus which should stay on the Amundsen mistakenly gets packed up and shipped off. That’s what happened to a minicomputer which was supposed to automatically adjust a sophisticated mercury detector out on the ice.

For now the researcher is coping by making regular excursions to manually flip switches. But you can bet that one pair of hands will be eagerly pawing through the boxes when they’re unloaded from the aircraft Thursday.

Charging polar bear would gauge your nerve

ALONGSIDE CCGS AMUNDSEN—Until today I had fired two kinds of firearms in my life — a .22 caliber rifle (groundhog control) and a 9mm Parabellum Kommando (the Rhodesian copy of the Israeli Uzi).

Eve Guilbault Photo

Claude Lafrance, Amundsen first officer, instructs the Star's Peter Calamai in the use of a polar bear deterrent.

Against a charging polar bear, however, you need heavier artillery. Much heavier. Like the 12-gauge shotgun that I got to fire this afternoon.

The story starts four years ago when I was on the Amundsen icebreaker in the Beaufort Sea west of here. A misbehaving helicopter engine forced Andy Derocher, a top Canadian polar bear expert, to spend a night with us.

At the request of the researchers on board, Derocher gave an impromptu talk about polar bears. I’m sure there was all sorts of biological content but the part I remember vividly is how difficult it is to stop a 500-kilogram charging male polar bear with even the heaviest artillery.

According to Derocher you’d be lucky to get off more than one round at killing range and you shouldn’t even think of a warning shot. It was kill or be killed in the rare instance that a polar bear had you in his sights.

All I had in the sights of the 12 gauge was a plywood rectangle about 20 metres away over the ice at the stern of the Amundsen. Four targets of concentric circles had been hastily drawn by hand because the store-bought targets had been shredded in previous practice.

Every group that goes out on the ice any distance away from the ship is supposed to be accompanied by a “gun,” meaning a crew member or scientist who holds a Firearms Acquisition Certificate and has firearms experience. On past Amundsen expeditions, there’s often been a paucity of people qualified to be a “gun.”

It’s our good fortune on Leg 7A of this expedition to be favoured with at least two young women researchers from families where daughters learned how to use guns, One of these, Halagonian Lisa Delaney, was in a group headed out for target practice today and she tipped me off so I could take photographs.

Yet again on this trip, however, I morphed from detached journalistic observer to active participant when Claude Lafrance, the Amundsen’s first officer, offered a chance to fire the 12 gauge. At first I declined but then machismo triumphed. After all, if some mere slip of a young woman could manage, surely 240 pounds of well-aged manhood could.

I am relieved to report that I didn’t point a loaded weapon at anyone, remembered how and when to engage the safety and ensured the shotgun was handed over empty to the next user. Nor did I fall over backwards with the recoil, which wasn’t as powerful as suggested by the muzzle blast.

I probably also didn’t hit the targets with any of my three blasts. It’s difficult to know for sure since we were firing shot-filled shells instead of the slug-filled ones you’d use for really deterring polar bears. So every inch of the plywood was sprayed with tiny holes. Maybe a few were mine.

It should go without saying (but in today’s accusatory climate, who knows) that none of the researchers want the death of a polar bear on their conscience. Yet I think I could pull the trigger if the necessity arose to protect me or my companions.

But maybe the trigger of a .308-calibre rifle, the other firearm carried by the Amundsen’s  “guns.” The shotgun is best for close-in defence and I’m not keen on being that close to  anything whose claws can gouge furrows five centimeters deep into a skull.

 

Hockey day in the Arctic

ON THE ICE BESIDE THE CCGS AMUNDSEN – On the world’s largest outdoor ice surface – the entire Arctic Ocean - the scientists and crew of the Amundsen icebreaker put on the world’s cleanest hockey game this afternoon.

It must have been clean because there were no penalties during the two-and-half hours of spirited play. No referee nor linesmen either. Or blue lines or a centre line.

Yet there was a good-sized playing surface after the Amundsen’s plows had shoved snow off smooth ice that’s at least a metre and a half thick. As well there were creases and nets (wood frames with poly plastic) and a frozen orange ball that stung like blazes if you were hit.

And plenty of goals (no official scorer, though.) Plus lots and lots of fun, which was the whole idea.

Right beside the marathon hockey tournament, a smaller but equally energetic group mounted a virtuoso soccer display. An utterly unscientific survey suggested that the Europeans aboard the ship gravitated to the soccer while the Canadians preferred hockey.

But there was no curling, Canada’s national winter sport (pace lacrosse). This omission was especially unfortunate since in far-off Vernon, B.C. Canada’s Jennifer Jones was at the same time clinching the women’s world curling championship. Of course everyone knows that the Canadian rink is also favoured in the men’s world championships next month.

Well, maybe not everyone. There were quite a few quizzical expressions among the scientists when a former Ontario schoolboy curling champion (long since retired from competitive curling) proposed adding a sheet of curling ice to the snow-clearing chores.

The rocks? Fill some large discarded tin cans with water and insert a wooden handle as they freeze. Coloured circles for the house? There’s red hydraulic fluid and something called alcian blue that stains the lab glassware. Brooms? Plenty of those aboard, and not those new-fangled push ones either.

Adding pebbles to the ice surface would be a cinch. Even in today’s relatively balmy minus 22 C water drops would have frozen in minutes.

About the only serious problem is the lack of a sponsor. Hurry hard, Tim Hortons.

Getting onboard with Earth Hour

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—At 8 o’clock last night the view from the Amundsen’s bridge was dazzlingly bright, even though the sun was only 10 degrees above the horizon.

There were no outside lights to switch off to mark Earth Hour because the usual night time lights hadn’t yet been turned on.

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

A snowmobile headlight is illuminated but outside lights on the icebreaker haven't yet been switched on at 9:15 last night, as the Amundsen' contribution to Earth Hour.

“I told you,” said a smiling Captain Lise Marchand.

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 Star reporters don’t give up easily.

I continued to talk up Earth Hour with kindred souls. I downloaded material from the web and left it at the captain’s doorway. I began raising the topic with Tim Papakyriakou, the very busy but also exceptionally patient chief scientist.

It all came to a head yesterday when Tim and the captain agreed that the Amundsen should do its part, even though the gesture would be mostly symbolic because the twilight now lasts almost until 9 o’clock.

So the plan wasn’t to turn off some the ship’s external lights. Instead, they won’t be turned on until after 9.

And that’s what happened. As it turns out, I joined an excursion last night out on the ice to an instrument-crammed sled which is the pride (and sometimes the heartache) of  Environment Canada researchers.

The  Amundsen was a bone-jarring snowmobile ride away across more than a kilometre of snow drifts and occasional ice ridges. It looked very small.

It also looked dark. Not until a quarter after 9 did the customary spotlights flick to life, like fireflies around the decks.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit feeling some relief when a light illuminated the red maple leaf emblem on the ship’s funnel. That’s my home, I thought, and it’s warm there and the bar is open tonight.

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.

 

 

No steam in sight

INSIDE THE CCGS AMUNDSEN–This venerable icebreaker is just as impressive below deck as it is above. More, if you are the one misfit from a family of engineers.

First, a confession. As an ancient mariner pointed out in an email, I have been guilty of anachronism when writing about the Amundsen “steaming” away.

As a descent into this ship’s bowels demonstrated today, there’s no steam involved in propelling her. In fact, the Amundsen was “green” decades before the current vogue, with the twin 14-tonne propellers driven by two DC electric motors.

Because the two shafts are turned by induction, there’s no gear box and nothing to damage if the 5-metre-wide propellers whack a piece of ice, although substantial nicks have been discovered when the ship was in dry dock.

That electricity is generated from two, four or as many as six V-16 main engines which run on marine diesel fuel. And before that old salt starts typing again, yes the diesel-electrics put out AC power which is then converted to DC.

That’s merely the icing from a fascinating 90 minutes spent with chief engineer Stéphane Dufour, who is responsible for everything mechanical on the ship, from the morning shower water to the power needed to advance at a steady three knots through metre-thick ice.

Growing up, Stéphane thought about becoming a doctor. But a friend mentioned the Coast Guard and by the first “sea phase” experience at the Coast Guard College, the 17-year-old had found his calling.

“It’s what I thought I was going to be doing as a kid but with bolts and not people,” he says.

Doctoring a 98-metre vessel takes four other engineers, six “oilers” and an electrician to together provide 24-hour monitoring of the ship’s vital signs.

Even when the Amundsen is immobile in the ice, like now, it burns between 5,000 and 6,000 litres of diesel a day in a smaller V-8 ship’s service engine for the electricity, heat, fresh water, and sewage system needed for this combined floating hotel and peripatetic research centre.

When the Amundsen is struggling in tough ice – as a week ago – daily fuel consumption can soar above 30,000 litres with all six V-16 main engines throbbing and a second V-8 service engine also running. On one day in early January the ship gulped 40,000 litres, a rate that even tanks holding 2.7 million litres can’t sustain when the next fill-up isn’t until mid-June.   

There’s also a third V-8 for redundancy plus a smaller diesel engine above the water line, so if the ship is holed and taking on water below there will still be emergency power.

As the photograph from the engine room shows, the scale of this hidden machinery is Brobdingnagian compared to the miniaturized instruments in the laboratories above deck.

That scale is one reason that it takes a half-hour to get the engines purring if the ship is in open water. When the ship has been chilled in an icy vise, however, the engineers like 90 minutes to bring the lubricating oil temperature gradually up to the optimal 70 C. In practice, the ship will run at Dead Slow for some time while that load helps warm up the engines.

A shame I can’t call it “getting up steam.”

PETER CALAMAI/TORONTO STAR

Amundsen's chief engineer Stéphane Dufor walks between a V-16 main engine and a V-8 service engine below deck in the icebreaker.

Shipmates for life

ABOARD THE CCGS AMUNDSEN – After two weeks I’ve finally figured out what I’m doing here on the icebreaker: I’m “embedded” much like a war correspondent with troops in Afghanistan.

My troops are the 40 Coast Guard crew and 41 scientific personnel on board. Like a war correspondent, I depend on them for my safety, shelter, food and – most importantly – my stories.

The parallels are eerie. I’m not supposed to leave the ship (equivalent of a military base) without clearance. Out on the ice, I’m always accompanied by someone with a gun (for polar bears.) Travel is on their snowmobiles or heavy duty snow cat (in Afghanistan it’s light-armoured vehicles).

Peter Calamai

Researchers Ralf Staebler and Klaus Hochheim launch a weather balloon from the helicopter platform at the stern of the icebreaker Amundsen. The balloon ascended to 20 kilometres, radioing back readings on wind direction and speed, temperature and humidity.

They look out for me in other ways too. When I was stumbling around on the deck with frosted-over spectacles the other day, Myriam Paquet-Gauthier, a “matelot” or seaman, gently guided me to the entryway. I try to do my bit by checking other faces for hints of frostbite and lending a hand with simple tasks (although just staying out of the way is my biggest contribution.)

Inevitably, the normal cautious separation between disinterested reporter and subject disappears, much like it does in war zones.

We’ve chorused Happy Birthday to our shipmates and together scoured corners for the miniature chocolate eggs secreted by some unknown Easter Bunny.   

It would be impossible – no, downright inhuman – to remain disinterested when someone with whom you’ve shared a life-altering exposure to the Arctic is obviously feeling joy or pain.

So I’m rooting – and not that quietly -- that Maike Kramer from the University of Kiel manages to incubate the thousand-plus rotifers she needs from that chest of sea ice. Or that a balky laser doesn’t create any more woes for Jeff Seabrook from York University. And I’m crossing my fingers in the hope that a crucial missing instrument component turns up for someone who will remain anonymous.

I realized my embedded position just a couple of evenings ago when, after several hours of minor tribulations, two researchers finally managed to release the first weather balloon on this leg of the Amundsen’s expedition.

As the white sphere rose rapidly from the helicopter deck, someone was imploring “Go, go, go.”

It was me.

 

Throwing a wrench in the works

ABOARD THE CCGS AMUNDSEN—Put a wrench or a screwdriver down within reach of anybody aboard this icebreaker and they’ll pick it up and fix a piece of equipment or machinery with it.

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Research technician Sylvain Blondeau carries out repairs under a water sampling apparatus assisted by Pascal Massot, both with the University of Laval.

(With the exception of the two reporters/writers, that is, one of whom sometimes has problems merely connecting his laptop.)

You’d expect such mechanical dexterity from the Coast Guard crew on the Amundsen. After all they’re often all on their own thousands of miles from the nearest hardware store, much less the closest repair shop. So if they can’t fix something, it stays broken.

Yet too many people think of research scientists as nerds wearing white lab coats and peering at computer monitors or grasping foaming test tubes.

That outdated stereotype is really warped here on a ship out in the midst of the frozen Arctic Ocean. A walk around the labs shoehorned into crannies and deck containers reveals example upon example of inventiveness with rubber hoses, bungee cords, clamps (plastic and metal), foam board, alligator clips and that reliable stand-by, tin foil.

Sure there are fragile custom-made glass components for air sampling that cost $800 a pop. But there are also passive air samplers cobbled together out of two stainless steel salad bowls, a threaded rod and a few washers and spacers (total cost: about $25).

When the researchers can’t fix something themselves, they turn to the ship’s experts, like the busy electrician Rémi Bisaillon who performs  miracles by the hour such as hooking up a 240-volt European air pump that’s 50 metres away from the ship (with distance, voltage drops and amperage rises).

Or the scientists turn to research technicians such as Sylvain Blondeau from Laval University, who works with colleagues Luc Michaud and Pascal Massot. It’s not exaggerating to say that without these three a lot less science would be accomplished on and off the Amundsen.

For example, Sylvain used heaters to unblock a frozen fuel line in the Bombardier BR ski cab, which had died five kilometers away from the ship. He taught himself hydraulics to commission a 10-tonne A-frame winch when the ship sailed before the manufacturers could finish the job. And over the past several days he brought the winch back to life from its winter hibernation on the port foredeck

Perforating the ice to free the ship took its toll on the Amundsen’s population of gas-powered augers and chain saws and it was Sylvain and colleagues who patched up the mechanical causalities and sent them back into the front lines.

Just this morning Sylvain was squirming under the water-sampling apparatus called a rosette to repair a flange, with Pascal assisting. They had to remove the recalcitrant part and clamp it in a vise in the ship’s machine shop.

When a bolt sheared off, they didn’t even swear. That part is now back in working order on the rosette.

 

Sundogs smile on icebreaker

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—After a run of bad luck, the Amundsen experienced an omen last night, and it’s turning out to have been a good one.

For almost an hour, everyone could see three suns setting off the ship’s port side. The phenomenon is called “the sun’s dogs” — or sundogs — and is visible in southern Canada under rare atmospheric conditions.

In the supercold Arctic air, conditions are much more favourable, since what’s needed is a sun low on the horizon (check), an atmosphere heavy with ice crystals (check) and an absence of smog (double check).

Acting like miniature prisms, the ice crystals bend the sun’s rays at least 22 degrees so your eye sees two mock suns, one on each side of the real thing. As the photograph here shows, the dogs are squished vertically and also have a tail stretching away from the sun.

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Ice crystals in the frigid Arctic air combine with a sun low in the sky to create an atmospheric phenomenon known as sun dogs.

 

An everyday rainbow is a reminder that sunlight is composed of a spectrum of colours, from red to blue. The colours have different wavelengths so they are bent or refracted different amounts by water droplets, spreading the sunlight out into a spectrum.

Something similar happens with sundogs, for which the scientific name is parhelia. If you look closely at the photograph, you’ll see the sundogs are reddish on the inner side, shading to blue on the outer.

There’s all sorts of neat physics involved in how the hexagonal ice prisms so often become aligned  horizontally as they fall through the air, the position that produces the most spectacular sundogs.

Perhaps more interesting to us, however, is that yesterday the ship was finally settled in a secure berth and today a controlled frenzy of measurements, observations and experiments is underway. Maybe the sundogs smiled on us.

 

 

This ain't no namby-pamby passenger ship

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – The icebreaker Amundsen is just like any other steamship you’ve been on – except that is crashes through metre-thick ice and all its inner workings are exposed.

Walk the 98-metre length of the ship inside on the main deck and four times you’ll have to step up six inches to pass through emergency bulkheads. Maybe passengers on cruise ships realize such doors exist but they aren’t drilled in how to operate them manually should the power fail.

Peter Calamai

Swedish researchers Agneta Fransson and Melissa Chierici of University of Gothenburg pass supplies down one the Amundsen's many stairways.

Going outside also provides a reminder that you are on a workaday vessel which, when it isn’t ferrying scientists around the Arctic, earns its pay keeping shipping lanes free of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are genteel wood doors with glass windows – as on cruise ships – but on the main deck they open into forbidding metal vestibules from which escape is through a water-tight door.

It’s opened by spinning a wheel that engages steel rods at four corners plus the top and bottom, with a satisfying kerchunk. Exiting requires stepping up well over a foot.

There are loads more examples – the long fire axes on the corridor walls, brilliant red pipes with mystifying markings, corridor handholds draped with drying mittens.

For me, however, the most satisfying reminder that this isn’t some namby-pamby passenger ship are the dozen or more yellowing plans that have been lovingly preserved behind glass in frames and mounted on the walls of the two most heavily trafficked decks – Upper and Main.

The drawings were done in the late 1970s when this ship was built at the Burrard Dry Dock Co. Ltd. in  B.C. Hand-drawn and hand-lettered, they quietly proclaim the skill of those draftsmen and also the pride which that company took in building well.

The engine room plan is mesmerizing, with neat notations of additions and subtractions from the original design. Even more remarkable are the drawings of the ship’s intestines – the bilge and ballast pumps – and its dual circulation systems  -- for fuel oil and fresh water.

The drawings also reveal some of what was lost when the Franklin, the name by which this ship was commissioned, was saved from the scrapyard and converted into a floating centre for Arctic research.

The Franklin boasted a substantial gymnasium and also a “hobby room,” both sacrificed to housing 40 researchers and their equipment. As well the ship originally had cabins reserved for “hydrographers” and “ice observers.” These have vanished too with the loss of some maritime romance in the bargain.

There’s one aspect of the Franklin/Amundsen’s design that doesn’t come across that well in the drawings, both historical and modern.

That’s the stairs. From the bridge to the main deck embraces five flights of stairs, with narrow treads and steep risers. In all, there are 55 steps. Then there are all the stairs outside and a further 15 steps down into the engine room, off limits without special permission.

On the Amundsen many people probably go up and down a thousand steps in a day. I’m sure that I’m managing at least 500. Finally I’m doing the step exercises which the physiotherapists ordered after my hip replacement operation last June.

 

Fantastic feasts on-board

ABOARD THE CCGS AMUNDSEN–The secret is bound to get out so I might as well come clean: We eat very well on this icebreaker. Very, very well.

Easter dinner today, for instance, started with a choice of superb spinach soup or, for those so inclined, escargots with puff pastry. Then a main course of ham off the bone in port sauce with rice and two green vegetables. Followed by a selection of cheeses. And finally far too many dessert choices (I opted for the chocolate cake with strawberries).

All that accompanied by your selection from one of four wines ranging in price from $10 to $20 a bottle. The wine is available for sale only on Sundays and limited to a bottle per cabin, meaning a half-bottle per person in most cases.

I don't want to leave the wrong impression. In the crew cafeteria where I usually eat along with most of the scientists on board, you line up at a hatch opening into the kitchen. When finished everyone is expected to rinse off their dishes, glasses and utensils in the wash-up area.

The officers dining area, one deck further up, gets its food from the same kitchen but has table service. A few senior scientists regularly eat there, often joined by other media people on-board.

It’s a marvel that anyone had any appetite left for the sumptuous dinner this evening.

Usually breakfast on-board is from 7:30 to 8:30 to straddle the times when officers come on and off watch. But today we had a brunch beginning at 10:30 and extending past noon.

It resembled one of those all-you-can eat buffets on cruise ships, except that the dishes were of much higher quality.

Instead of lining up at the hatch, we filed through the kitchen itself where every breakfast offering from individual weekdays was on offer – fresh croissants, bacon, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs, porridge, French toast, crepes, beans, several kinds of cold salad, assorted fresh fruit and maybe a half-dozen desert choices. (Honest, I didn’t have desert at both brunch and dinner.)

Star reporter Peter Calamai (right, in red) joins crew and scientists for Easter Sunday brunch on the icebreaker Amundsen.

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.

Those on-board who have also been on the scientific ships of other nations never cease to proclaim that Canada is the best, by far.

It's even said that the regular fare on the U.S. Coast Guard’s polar research icebeaker, the Healey, is wieners and beans.

Wait for me!

Peter Calamai

Environment Canada research scientist Alexandra ("Sandy") Steffen and University of Manitoba research technician Debbie Armstrong collect samples of surface snow to analyze for mercury deposited from the atmosphere.

ON THE ICE – Black exhaust smoke suddenly began billowing out of the Amundsen’s funnel, a sign that the six powerful engines were being revved up.

The Coast Guard icebreaker was only a few hundred metres away. Nonetheless it’s an alarming thought that your cozy floating home is about to steam off when the temperature is minus 32 C out on an Arctic ice floe.

Of course, that wouldn’t have happened. Our trio was in radio contact with the bridge officers. As well, the captain had said she was merely trying to shuffle the stuck ship back and forth to clear floating ice from beneath the doors of the moonpool. That’s the hole cut though the hull in the stern where sampling and recording devices can be lowered into the water, as far as the ocean floor if necessary.

Nonetheless I’ll confess to some relief when shortly afterwards Debbie Armstrong announced that she and Environment Canada research scientist Sandy Steffen had finished gathering samples of surface snow from a pristine patch they’d marked with reflectors as off-limits to snowmobiles.

The two women are part of a group on board that’s researching how mercury moves through the air, snow, ice and Arctic food chain (.pdf)(And it does some very peculiar things. More about that in the Star later).

Debbie, an ebullient and impressively accomplished research technician from the University of Manitoba,  has a firearms certificate so she was toting the polar bear rifle. A close-up glance revealed something blue was stretched over the end of the barrel.

“It’s the finger of a latex glove,” Debbie explained. “There’s so much salt out on the ice that it was getting into the guns and they were rusting.”

That was the second surprise of the morning. The first came when we arrived to be lowered by a crane down to the ice in a metal cage, like miners going to work underground.

Amundsen crew members were busily scraping ice from the deck with choppers and shovels, just as Canadians do to driveways and sidewalks. But while spring has officially arrived across the entire country, conditions are going to remain wintry up here for weeks.

Hours of toil for a ship-length of progress

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—Vincent Gagnon, the Amundsen’ helmsman at the time, was the first to notice.

“Yes, it’s moving,”  he said just after 5 o’clock.

The icebreaker’s engines had been running at full for almost an hour, starting up after the crew members and scientists spent a second three hours outside in the minus 29 degree temperature to finish perforating the ice around the part of the ship wedged tight in a floe.

Initially the propellers were running in forward gear, churning water up onto the ice beneath the ship’s hull and clearing the path behind of floating ice. Then Captain Lise Marchand switched to reverse and the floating Arctic research laboratory inched slowly backward.

Now the ship is again stuck and the same manoeuvre is being repeated.

In between, however, those on board were treated to a half-hour of ramming -- something novice icebreaker sailors known about only from movies like Pirates of the Caribbean.

In this case it wasn’t another ship being rammed but a tough pressure ridge that stretched to the far horizon horizontally in front of the ship. (The not-so-far and much more curved horizon to be scientifically precise with my clichés.)

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.

So the scientists met tonight to map out a campaign of experiments that will draw on their brain power as much as the last two days have drawn on muscle power.

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.

And Captain Lise Marchand has another trick to try to dislodge the vessel from the icy vise that grasped it late yesterday. In the next hour or so, the Amundsen’s engineers will begin pumping 50,000 litres of fuel from starboard tanks to the uppermost tanks on the port side.

This added weight should increase the leverage action of the tilted ship, with the encased keel acting like a fulcrum.

If that doesn’t free the Amundsen, it’s not clear at this point what other options are available. Cutting the ship free by hand isn’t possible because the ice at the bow end is far thicker than the biggest chainsaws on board.

Larger hand saws do exist, relics of the days when ice was taken from lakes and rivers across the country for refrigeration. In my hometown of Brantford, Ont. such saws were used every spring to cut “keys” in the frozen Grand River to reduce the risks of flooding,

It’s hardy feasible to do that for a 98-metre ship, especially when it seems only one of the giant manual ice saws is still on board. Stay tuned.

 

Photo by Peter Calamai

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.

So within the last few minutes the Amundsen crew (with some scientists helping) began using gas-powered augers to perforate the ice along the port side, from the bow back about a quarter of the ship’s length.

The icebreaker had come to rest yesterday leaning slightly to port (the left side, facing forward) so the thinking is that there’s more weight on that side and maybe a good chance of the ice weakening once its structural integrity has been compromised by the drill holes.

Meanwhile many of the researchers onboard are getting noticeably antsy. They’ve worked up all the samples that had been gathered previously, carried out maintenance on their onboard detectors and equipment brought in from the ice and even read that scientific paper that had long awaited their attention. They want to start collecting ice and water and algae and air and chemical contaminants plus all those environmental measurements unique to the Amundsen Gulf at this time of year.

If the ship doesn’t get unstuck today, this could become our new berth for quite some time. I suspect that would be just fine with many of the scientists.

A polar version of aerating the green

As in golf, so it is with icebreakers: the putting is the really tricky part.

After getting unstuck from last night’s stopping point, the Amundsen had the equivalent of two booming drives down the Arctic fairway today and a fabulous approach shot to the green.

But then we found our ship was stymied. The final destination, our version of the cup in golf, was only a few hundred metres away. But between the ship and the hole loomed a long pressure ridge. And running up to that ridge the ship stuck solid, like having your golf ball land in a deep divot.

So the crew began the polar version of aerating the green. With two crew members holding opposite sides of gas-powered augers that are head high and heavy and awkward, teams drilled a chain of boreholes along the starboard side of the ship. (It should be noted that some hardier scientists also drilled, such as Stig Falk-Petersen from the Norwegian Polar Institute).

From the relative comfort of the ship’s main deck, the operation looked something like adding perforations to the edge of a stamp.

The theory is that the perforations weaken the vise-like grip along that side. With its icy girdle loosened, the Amundsen will be able to tug itself free. We could back up and hook the ship around into another spot.

The engines have now been running full throttle for almost a half-hour and there’s been no movement. I’ll let you know how this works out.

Photo by Peter Calamai

Sweet symphony of ice breaking

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – As the song says in the musical The Man of La Mancha, it doesn’t matter whether the stone hits the water pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, the result isn’t going to be good for the pitcher. So it is with a Class 3 icebreaker and Arctic ice that’s been formed only this winter.

Peter Calamai

Amundsen Captain Lise Marchard checks instruments on the ship’s bridge prior to moving the research icebreaker to a new position in the Western Arctic. Pull-down plastic shades provide relief from the glare of Arctic ice and snow.

The six diesel-electric engines of the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen deliver 15,000 horsepower to propel the 98-metre vessel with its 6,000-tonne displacement. Hit by that force at 10 knots, the ice peeled back like the old blistered paint scrapped from  my garage this summer. While the visuals aren’t much, the sounds will linger forever in the memory of any visitor fortunate enough to be aboard when an icebreaker lives up to its name. In the bowels of the ship, the grinding of ice against the hull is amplified into a deep rumble, like rocks being continually dumped onto a metal sheet just outside your front door.

Leaning over the ship bow, however, the assault upon the cryosphere has an almost lyrical aspect, a sliding between different pitches which a composer would mark as glissando on a score. And also resoluto, meaning to play boldly with energy.

The Amundsen was en route today to a new ice floe berth around the east side of Banks Island. But we stopped en route to gather samples of water and ice for scientific studies so we won’t be able to reach our intended destination in daylight.

********************************

UPDATE: The musical duet of the ice and the icebreaker continued for another hour-and-a-half into the late evening and then stopped. The Amundsen is now stuck in a floe that's thick enough and binding enough to be second-year ice. We've tried wiggling without success. Now the crew is looking at pumping ballast water to raise the bow and lower the stern, giving the propellers a deeper bite. If that doesn't work, they may pump some warm water out onto the ice to soften it and lubricate the surface. I'm so confident that this will be solved that I'm turning in for the night.

New ice, old ice

Peter Calamai

Chief scientist Tim Papakyriakou hauls garbage bags filled with snow to serve as markers for a make-shift runway on a remote ice floe where a Twin Otter is scheduled to land Wednesday to set up a day-visit research camp.

ABOVE AMUNDSEN GULF—Peering down at the frozen Arctic Ocean from a skimming helicopter is somewhat like lying on your back and looking at clouds scuttling overhead.

There’s a never-ending progression of phantasmagorical shapes, limited only by the viewer’s imagination and experience.

Someone who has spent time in southern Africa might find that the irregular checkerboard patterns formed by pressure ridges remind them of kraals, the rural mud enclosures for cattle.

Then there are the ridges that stretch to the horizon, some lines straight enough to pass for railway embankments but most resembling wandering cow paths. Elsewhere the surface patterns echo the way family farms got divvied up into thinner and thinner slices under the seigniorial system in medieval Europe.

For more than two hours today this icescape of the imagination unrolled beneath the Coast Guard’s rented Bell 212 helicopter after it lifted off from the research icebreaker Amundsen, which is temporarily wedged into an ice floe just south of Banks Island in the Western Arctic.

I joined five others on the flight: the two pilots, Bob Pelletier and Trevor Dewin; the Amundsen’s captain, Lise Marchand; the chief scientist for this leg of the expedition, Tim Papakyriakou; and Pierre Larouche, a phytoplankton researcher with the federal department of fisheries and oceans.

All of them were scanning the frozen vista with eyes much more practiced and practical than mine.

Someone experienced in reading the ice could tell that everything below during the entire 425-kilometre journey was new, formed only this winter. The clues are topography, colour and – if you get close enough – taste.

New ice is too salty to keep in your mouth but most of the salt has leached from multi-year ice and it can be safely sucked.

From the air, however, the best tip-off is the topography or surface contours. Melting and refreezing during summer smoothes the characteristic jagged landscape of new ice into more gentle hills and dales of multi-year ice.

Where wind has blown away the snow, the colour of the ice can also help. New ice is much bluer in the surface layer than multi-year ice. Scientists would cringe at my simplistic explanation but let’s just say the older ice gets, the more the top portion looks worm-riddled.

This is only a kindergarten introduction to the manifold varieties of sea ice. To truly immerse yourself look at the ice codes pages on the website of the Canadian Ice Service. And you might also be fascinated with sastrugi.

That’s an Antarctic word that Tim imported to describe the snow surface on the remote ice floe in Prince of Wales Strait where a day-visit research camp will be set up later this week.

Today we marked a make-shift runway there for the aircraft that will try to land to deliver a large tent and other equipment. If you happen to be flying over the Strait and spot a dozen black garbage bags more or less in a straght line, you’ll be able to see sastrugi first hand.

A chilly data check

 

Peter Calamai

Two Environment Canada researchers crowd use a parka as a sun shield so they can read a laptop screen in the brilliant Arctic whiteness. The icebreaker Amundsen in three kilometres away in the background.

OFF CCGS AMUNDSEN—It was an ideal day for an excursion on the Arctic ice – brilliant sun, a cloudless sky, barely a zephyr of wind and a fascinating research project at the end of a short trip.

But I’d forgotten how unwieldy a body becomes encased in five layers of clothing. Without Ralf Staebler’s help I might never have managed to get my legs astride the snowmobile.

Staebler and fellow Environment Canada research scientist Alexandra (“Sandy”) Steffen were making one of the every-other-day runs from the coast guard ship Amundsen out to a suite of detectors that are constantly recording chemicals like mercury and bromine as they flit between snow, ice and the air.

It’s not quite a lab on a chip, but it is a lab on a sled. The whole instrument armoury is less than two metres long and draws a mere 100 watts.

That’s the same as a standard light bulb (of the old-fashioned incandescent kind). Even then it would take a long extension cord, since the Amundsen is 1.3 kilometres away.

In the crisp Arctic air the ship seems a lot closer, say within a Tiger Woods driver and mid-iron range. But Jacques Claveau, the bosun or maître d’équipage in the ship’s working language, points out that distances are easier to gauge from the deck, because the 800-metre runway provides a rough-and-ready ruler.

Jacques is the most crucial member of the four-person team; he’s armed with the rifle that might just stop a hungry polar bear. If he’s a very good shot, that is.

To keep the lab-on-a-sled ticking over, batteries have to be changed every two days. We’re not talking your household AAs or car battery either, but eight heavy, deep-discharge, 12-volt marine batteries.

Switching the battery connections requires doffing mittens and even cotton liners. Your fingers register the minus 25 C within a nanosecond. Maybe less.

The sled must also be repositioned to ensure that a guy rope isn’t interfering with a sensor. And since no one brought a hammer, Jacques fetches a hefty chunk of ice to drive the guy rope stake into the frozen surface.

Then comes the big moment – downloading the past 48 hours worth of precious data from the sled’s onboard computer. Sandy dramatically unzips her parka and extracts a laptop that’s been warmly nestled there.

The brand name may be ToughBook but the Environment Canada scientists have found to their sorrow that even these laptops don’t stand up well to Arctic cold. The one being used today is a spare of another make after the incumbent died and couldn’t be resuscitated.

The laptop links to the sled’s computer through a wireless connection, although there’s a metal box separating them. A far greater technical problem is being able to read the laptop screen in the stagelight glare of Arctic sun, snow and ice.

Sandy’s parka again comes to the rescue, used as a substitute for the dark cloth with which photographers shield the viewing screens of large-format cameras.

Jacques laughs at the sight of the two scientists huddled under the parka, saying it looks like one parka animal is devouring the other.

While Ralf keeps watch in the dark on the data transfer, the parka-less Sandy tries to keep warm by running in tight circles and performing calisthenics. After more than five minutes, she finally admits to feeling cold.

Fortunately the readings have successfully been retrieved and a few minutes later all four of us are back aboard the ship.

 

 

A lesson in vulnerability

 

PETER CALAMAI/TORONTO STAR

The initial wave of evacuees from the Amundsen huddle on the ice in a General Alarm drill. Several score more would join after checking lifeboats and manhandling the ship's helicopter out of its hanger.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN–The claxon sounded its seven short and one long blasts right on schedule at 2 in the afternoon. If it had been a real General Alarm someone would likely have slung me over their shoulder and bundled me rapidly off the Amundsen icebreaker.

But since it was merely a drill the Coast Guard crew and scientists indulgently allowed the old-guy reporter to edge down the ship’s gangway, picking my way so slowly you’d have thought that the humongous Baffin boots (guaranteed to minus 60 C) came with stiletto heels.

I tried rationalizing that the ship was riding higher in the ice – and therefore the gangway was at a much steeper angle -- than when I managed the same feat far less tentatively in 2004.

And later, Captain Lise Marchand kindly agreed that the Amundsen was light on fuel and would ride higher. But she also agreed, with a smile, with my analysis that four more years and 20 extra pounds probably did not help my ability to quickly evacuate a ship supposedly threatened by a fire.

Another lesson which the drill brought home is the vulnerability of the cozy ship that is home to 40 scientists and roughly the same number of crew. When you’re onboard it’s a self-contained community offering warm beds, three hot meals a day, both satellite and closed-circuit TV, Internet access, lounges, a workout room (claustrophobic through it may be) and your name printed on a card outside the cabin door.

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.

The nearest help is at least a hour-and-a-half flying time away and the planes that would come usually hold about 15 passengers.

If there were a real fire, lives would depend on whether the ship’s personnel could put it out quickly. If not, the crew would have to get the emergency supplies down to the ice right away. And an overweight, arthritic 64-year-old would have to move a lot faster.

Filling the cupboards

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Fresh supplies are hoisted aboard the Amundsen icebreaker after being ferried by snowmobiles from a shuttle of small planes landing on an airstrip prepared on the ice.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN–When the nearest store is a 90-minute flight away, it can be a big job ensuring that the cupboards don’t become bare.

In an impressive display of logistics an entire tractor-trailer of vital supplies was airlifted here today from Inuvik, which is a 90-minute flight each way across the frozen vastness of the Arctic Ocean.

Call it the Nelson Head Airlift, echoing the famous Berlin Airlift of 1948-49.

A grey smudge on the horizon, Nelson Head is the closest point of land to where the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen is frozen into the western Arctic ice south of Banks Island.

The low cliffs are the first break in expanse of white and snow for the pilots from Aklak Air in Inuvik who ferried much-needed supplies to the Amundsen, the first major resupply since the ship left Quebec in July on an Arctic scientific odyssey that will last until the fall of 2009.

These supplies had started their journey in Quebec, loaded onto a semi which drove to Inuvik. Then the boxes had to be hand-loaded on and off the small twin-engine planes like the DeHavilland Twin Otter, a famed workhorse, and the newer Bandeirante from Brazil’s Embraer.

Once the laden planes arrived at the landing strips groomed from the ice here, a shuttle of snowmobiles pulling sleds whisked through minus 40C air (with the wind chill) to bring the supplies alongside the ship where they were winched aboard.

Every few hours the ship’s public address system would blare with calls for volunteers to help in unloading stacks of boxes, containing everything from engine room essentials to canned goods. Human chain gangs shifted the supplies down flights of stairs from the outside deck.

The airlift had already transferred 150 crew and scientists on and off the Amundsen on Friday, plus about 5,000 pounds of scientific equipment that arrived on a charter flight.

Today another 20,000 pounds was safely and efficiently brought on board.

The astonishing aspect for any homeowner who has an garage, attic and basement stuffed with surplus junk is that those boxes have already mostly disappeared, their contents cunningly stowed away in the nooks and crannies of a vessel that is only 98 metres long from bow to stern.

The contents of a few more cartons may well disappear tonight, one of three nights a week when the ship’s small bar opens for a few hours.

Finally aboard

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN–Twelve hours, two airplanes, and a chilly snowmobile ride after leaving Winnipeg, I finally clawed my way up the steeply inclined gangplank of the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen, a floating science laboratory.

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO Boarding the Amundsen is usually done by nosing it into some solid ice and clearing a serviceable runway nearby, as seen in the upper right of this photo from 2004.

It felt good to be back. In the winter of 2004, I’d spent almost two weeks aboard the same ship when it was deliberately frozen into the ice of the Beaufort Sea.

But now the Amundsen is roaming the open waters around the southern tip of Banks Island, the first time any Canadian ship has been mobile in the Arctic Ocean in the wintertime. (Maybe ANY ship, although you’re never quite sure about the Russians.)

For the next three weeks I’ll be roaming with it.

First priority is to reacquaint myself with the ship’s confusing internal geography, where everything always seems to be up or down a set of stairs from where you’re starting out. I have, however, figured out where cafeteria is located – in the stern on level six. And I’m headed there now for dinner.

There’s nothing like travel for building up an appetite.

Waiting in Winnipeg

The most predictable aspect of travel in the Arctic is that it's unpredictable. So often is travel there and back.

A bleary-eyed group of Arctic researchers turned up at 4 a.m. Thursday at a commercial hanger here in Winnipeg only to learn that their charter flight – scheduled to depart at 5 a.m. – was still at its starting point in Quebec with mechanical problems.

The aircraft is ferrying a change of crew and scientists to the Coast Guard ship Amundsen, which is providing a floating laboratory for a year-long investigation of vanishing sea ice around Banks Island in the western Arctic.

The plane is now expected to arrive here no earlier than 4 a.m. Friday. The 24-hour delay gives the dozen scientists joining the flight here time to deal with another perennial problem of research in the Arctic – two much cargo for the available space.

Fortified by coffee and freshly baked pastries, University of Manitoba professor Tim Papakyriakou, chief scientist for this leg of the expedition, began sorting out the cargo problem with his colleagues.

I snuck back to the room I had just vacated in an airport hotel. Fortunately it was still available, since all other hotel rooms in Winnipeg are taken because of the Brier curling championship here this week. Maybe I’ll be able to take in the Alberta-Ontario matchup before the flight leaves?