Monday 15 April 1974
Repairs to the generators are still proceeding. Bob Grant cleared some of the more inconvenient snow drifts with the front end loader. Tony Atkinson stripped, cleaned and lubricated the camera drive motor in the ionosonde and I sawed seals. The laboratory staff trounced the post office at pool.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind North-East 5 knots Temperature -18.0°C
Tuesday 16 April 1974
Repairs to the Caterpillar generators are still proceeding. Mike Wing has decided to put the pups in the garage cold porch. They make a terrible mess in the sledge room and are at the age when they would separate from the bitch anyway. He took the D4 down to the summer lines and brought in all the summer stakes.
We are all frustrated to find that Antarctic Division does not wish to take stock check figures over the phone. From this end the attitude is incomprehensible as we must now prepare long signals which are meaningless until decoded and the Post Office have to send then whilst Antarctic Division can do nothing with the signal until they transfer the results onto the stock sheets – which is just as much work for them as entering the figures directly onto the stock sheets in the first place anyway, The only reason I have been given is that no one can spare the time at Antarctic Division to be coping figures from the phone. This hardly suggests any great eagerness to get the results of our efforts.
This evening Ray Colliver held his first cooking lesson. Everyone was interested and it went over very well.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind North-North-East 14 knots Temperature -13.8°C
Wednesday 17 April 1974
Both Caterpillar generators are now finally repaired and back in service. Mike is carrying out sledge repairs. He doesn’t take the dogs out enough and I may eventually have to start taking them myself. This will cause a lot of friction and is a step I am reluctant to take. Of course it is now so cold that running the dogs is not pleasant for man or beast. When I tax Mike with his failure he usually promises to take the team out at some specific time but you cannot treat Antarctica like that. The dogs must be taken when Antarctica permits NOT when we decide. Inevitably such plans are frustrated by the weather.
Today we used the Lincompex terminal during the phone schedule to New Zealand for the first time. Reception did seem a little better. Bill Johnson has now started to clean out the kitchen ice melter. There is about two inches of black sludge in the melting tank under the ice platform. It is a big job involving emptying the system right out and getting inside both the melting tank and the storage tank to clean them.
Filling the ice melter. The glow is from the generator exhausts
Conditions at 0900 hours Calm Temperature -14.5°C
Thursday 18 April 1974
The kitchen ice melter has now been cleaned but it will take some time to refill it with water. We are putting in small quantities of well broken ice every hour. Bob Grant has finished the Ferguson stocktake and the results are with the Post Office. Mike Wing is inspecting all the tents. They almost all need quite a lot of work. I am remaking the oil pump mounting and drive on the heat machine.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind East 8 knots Temperature -9.9°C
Friday 19 April 1974
Now that the seals have been sawn it may be a good time to record the difficulties of the job and the lessons we learned. First the difficulties.
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A dead seal is as hard to manhandle as an 800lb cake of soap.
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Its skin is tough and the fur full of grit which rapidly blunts the chain. Sparks can be seen in the cut.
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Blubber closes behind the chain and grips the blade.
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Carburettor icing can occur.
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Chain oiling is necessary even when one is cutting through blubber as friction occurs between chain and blade. The chain can freeze to the blade.
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The saw motors need hourly refuelling and frequent thawing. Modern oils are probably toxic to dogs.
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The chain needs resharpening after about 10 seals.
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The operator gets covered in a fine dust of meat meal and snow which stains his clothing beyond local cleansing.
The lessons we learned were:
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Keep the chain sharp. If the saw will not cut two seals up per tank something is wrong. This is the key to the whole problem as if the chain cuts well the other difficulties are reduced.
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Make sure there are plenty of replacement chains
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As soon as performance falls get the chain sharpened using the jig.
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It is best to have two saws, one in use and one being refuelled, lubed, sharpened and checked by another man.
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If the seals have been laid side by side in ice they will have drifted over. Dig the snow away on one side and lever the seal a few inches away from the file.
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Let the saw cut snow and ice as well as the seal. This tends to cool the cut, the meat remains frozen, has less tendency to nip the blade and is cleaner.
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One man should do the cutting. There is no sense in ruining several sets of windproofs.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind East-North-East 9 knots Temperature -12.5°C
Saturday 20 April 1974
Last night we had the McMurdo civilians to dinner. They included six USARP scientists, two foreign exchange scientists and three Holmes and Naver staff. The evening was a success but Dr Alice McWhinney the senior US scientists was rather embarrassed because Bill Johnson lured Dr Sergei Abakimov the Russian geologist into a drinking contest which he, Sergei, lost. As a result he performed cossack dances, gave us all a communist badge and hugged Sister Odelie Cahoon the USARP nun. Eventually we carried him from the Base on the rescue sledge and drove him to McMurdo.
Today Mike Wing, Tony Atkinson and Stuart Clarke (with Chris Stockwell from McMurdo) took the dogs to the crashed Hercules. We were startled to find this morning that the freshly cleaned ice melter tank had fishy particles floating in it. Somehow our ice had become contaminated. I suspect that in years past some seal has been gutted near the point from which we are collecting ice at the moment. Anyway the result was that I spent most of the day including my lunch time inside the tank baling it out, scrubbing it and cleaning it with polypads.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind North-North-East 12 knots Temperature -17.0°C
Sunday 21 April 1974
Since I was yesterday’s late mouse, this morning I slept in to midday. In the afternoon I walked out to the ski chalet and back to get a bit of exercise. Meantime Stuart Clarke was wrestling with a problem with the photometer. It needs to be aligned very accurately so that any light source it detects can be accurately fixed. The method has been to look at markers through sights on the top of the box but this assumed that the sights were correctly aligned with the optical receiver inside the box – an assumption which seemed questionable. To resolve the doubt Tony Atkinson and Stuart tried to align the box by putting a light at a distance and noting the position at which the recorder showed the maximum light input. It didn’t work too well as the device is so sensitive it records reflections of the light off nearby objects as well as the light itself. Also it (the device) is heavy and difficult to turn smoothly whilst noting results. This last problem has been reduced by putting it onto an aluminium pallet. Whilst Stuart and Tony were struggling with all this the ink in the recorders froze adding to the problem. They will try again during the week.
Conditions at 0900 hours Wind East-North-East 5 knots Temperature -23.5°C
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