Cooking in the storm

This week without a cook calls for many volunteers in the kitchen – and the food is
super! Thanks to all that contribute.

During night the wind picked up to 25 knots and we woke to a stormy morning with the outdoor toilet upside down. The Dome is a warm and cozy building and 3-4 have been busy in the kitchen today cooking excellent meals for us. Most work is in the subsurface trenches and could continue regardless of the weather.

The news of today is that Jakob deployed the sonic logger in the borehole tonight and the data shows that the bedrock still is 65 m away at the depth 2600m. So – bedrock might not be as near as we had hoped. In the science trench the newcomers where introduced to the processing while the cfa team where busy packing.

Drilling: 7.24 m, drillers depth: 2516.97 m
Logging: 7.47 m, loggers depth: 2533.12 m
Processing: 18.15 m (bag 4481-4513), processing depth: 2482.15 m

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and core logging ice.
2. CFA packing.
3. Maintenance of generator
4. Sonic logging.
5. Media filming, photographing and interviewing in camp

Ad 1. The drilling is becoming more difficult with long drill times and shorter ice cores. We drilled ice cores from 0.4 m to 1.7 m using 30 min to 1 hrs to drilling. The drill drills for a while, slips and we can from time to time get the drill to ‘bit’ again by stopping rotation and waiting a few minutes before restarting the rotations. We believe melt water freezes under the drill shoes and by stopping we let the ice freeze to the bottom. At times we succeed in ripping the ice under the shoes loose when we restart. We decided to try the nano coating of the drill shoes and cutters tomorrow and will do the coating tonight on a clean drill head and let it dry overnight.
We have 1000l of drill liquid left at NEEM. The liquid level needs to be 80m measured with the deep drill when we reach bedrock to give a 0.5 bar underpressure at the bed. Sigfus, Steff and Tobbe left us yesterday and we sorely miss them. Luckily Henry, Simon and Mark have joined us. Alex and Darcy are helping Henry in the workshop while waiting for their NZ drill equipment.

Ad 2. During maintainance an oil leak in the main crank shaft of the generator was discovered. This is serious and might need a 2 day shut down of the generator for repair. The leak and repair possibilities are being investigated by Simon and Sverrir.

Weather: Overcast with wind up to 25 knots from SW and temperatures up to -4 °C. We have snowfall and snow drift, pressure is low.

FL’s Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and Anders Svensson

During the storm the outdoor toilet is about to lift

Drilling is a challenge. High (red) current indicates good drilling, medium current
shows the drill is rotating but not drilling and low current that the rotations have
been stopped. Jiwoong is the master!