Posted by nicole on 12/20/2005 09:26 am

What an amazing year it's been for me… January 2005 Sumatra, June 2005 Greenland, and now in the Southern Ocean. Which freak gets to go to the Arctic for summer and then onto Antarctica for summer in the same year? Two cold summers in one year??? At Greenpeace one never knows what one's going to get. But I can bet on it…you can't get it anywhere else.

I was shrieking in Greenland at the littlest iceberg. I am silenced here… The ocean is so mighty, making me feel so small. The birds that fly around us make me feel trapped… The sun is as distant as land. I tried asking Arne our captain how big the Southern Ocean really is. And he just shrugged…somebody surely has it figured out he said…I was left staring at the map, following the Southern Ocean stretching along the planet uninterrupted. Wild mighty ocean, the mother of them all... I am but a tiny little creature awestruck.

Life on board is strange...its not like sailing to anywhere else…the Southern Ocean…churns, churning all the water and air...and us. Quite literally and not just physically.

Sleep eluding us all…makes us raw…tender... The mind and heart too swim around... too much work just trying to keep a thought in place...hats off Lally...you doing your blogs in bad weather!!!

But how the balance returns once the sea calms… How can we forget that we are a part of this magnificent act of creation? We are living it Breathing it Every moment.

I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world right now, no matter what. So bring on the hardship, bring on the struggle...for no beauty comes without some pain.

From the Arctic Sunrise

- Isha
Awestruck cookie!

Posted by nicole on 12/20/2005 09:22 am

First of all, thanks to those of you who've written back with nice things to say about these postings - it's good to know folks are actually reading them, 'cuz I know they're sometimes quite long. For me, it's nice to write because I don't keep a journal and I'm sure after this trip, it'll all get blurry fast. So if you feel like dropping a line and telling me what's up in the world (George Bush resigned, the Seahawks are leading their division, Bill Richardson lead a 5.11 at Seneca, etc,) that'd be just lovely. Even though I'm slow to reply, you just wouldn't believe how nice it is to get an email when you've been at sea already for over a month and don't have television, the morning paper or much of a grapevine!

I hate to be such a boat obsessed geek, but the biggest news from here - as far as I'M concerned at least - is that, after a solid month of work, I think the Billy G. is finally fully ready to go get 'em. A lot of work has been done, but I can't tell you much about it 'til we engage the whalers. The boat came to Cape Town in fine shape, but fitting it for the specifics of THIS work, both in terms of making her match up with the ship operations as well as tricked out for the whalers, made for a long list of things to do. For those of you who know the boat, I think you'd raise an eyebrow over what she looks like now. As we say around here, she's been "Monster Garaged". I still want to paint flames on her somewhere, but I'm thinking my colleague Dan might not be too keen on that...and don't worry Dan: we did all of it with very few little alteration to the boat itself.

More of the crew has had time at the wheel and many have gushed afterward about just how fine a boat she is, in her handling and stability (we took her out on a pretty rowdy day again for about four hours last week and had a wild, wet, good time working against the ship. This time, neither the boat nor any of the crew took much of a beating). I've probably said it before, but I just love this boat. I enjoy working with all of our equipment, but it's cool when you get to work with something in a way where you've covered almost every inch of it at some point and come to know it almost personally.

-Nathan 

(photo©Greenpeace/Sutton-Hibbert)