the gianella

After being stuck in pack ice, our fuel tanker, Gianella (sounds like a bad disease to me), arrived last week and unloaded 6 million gallons of fuel, or so. The Oden deserves some ovation for guiding our supply ships in and out of the ice this year. We had all hoped that the ice closer to Ross Island would blow out to give us open sea this year, but we only have the ice channel and turning basin somewhat clear to see whales.

The fuel tanker is gone now and McMurdo, field camps, and the South Pole can now rest assure that we all have enough fuel on the continent to run our operations for another year. Perhaps the biggest challenge is being able to send aircraft full of the stuff to South Pole with a season of maintenance and weather delays. Most of our power needs are generated from fuel. We also feed the aircraft down here with extensive hoses and pipelines.

Some of our field camps have switched to "alternative" energy; like solar power. Scott Base, our New Zealand neighbors down here are working on a project to install wind machines to power their base. They will feed their project through McMurdo who will make use of the excess and decrease everyone's reliance on fuel. Thank you to the kiwis for some forward thinking! It doesn't take a genius to realize we have a lot of wind here to utilize; or, for that matter, a lot of sunlight during the summer!