Science begins
The day started with a successful balloon launch at 10am local time. The wind was very light and it we couldn’t have asked for better conditions for our first balloon launch of the campaign.
Barb started to program the Lidar.
Alan, Dan and I took the UAV out to the football field behind Grytviken. The wind was fairly low and well within limits for flying. Unfortunately the quest didn’t seem to be flying correctly. After about five attempts we came to the conclusion that the ailerons were missed aligned and were not moving up and down enough to give the UAV the lift it needed. We headed back to the boat shed to do some maintenance.
Out on the ocean
After 2 days and 10 hours at sea we sailed into King Edward point. The ship had done a steady 15 knots all the way from Stanley. We were very lucky with the seas on the way over and only Barb suffered with sea sickness.
As we approached KEP there were a couple of growlers to avoid and eventually we anchored up just outside the base. We were met by a BAS jet boat that supplied us with immersion suits and life jackets and we were shuttled ashore to our new home for the next couple of weeks.
Arrived at KEP at last
After our tour of the base we were relieved to see that all our science kit had made it safely to KEP and was now all packaged up in a shipping container. We soon realised the container would act as a great balloon inflating tent so we shuffled things around inside to give us some room at the front in preparation for the balloons.
Next we were shown our lab and we started to setup the radio sonde equipment and computers.
That evening we decided to head over to Grytviken to the old Whaling station. It was a lovely day and the clouds were amazing.
Arriving at KEP video blog from Alan
A Short video of Alan explaining the weather and conditions as we sail into KEP