Days 58, 59 + 60

  Halley V

  Sign at Halley

  Halley VI

  The Dobson machine for Ozone measurement

  Snow tractor

Happy New Year!

More cargo work, over the past couple of days. We celebrated the new year with some mulled wine and the traditional eight rings of the ships bell at midnight, the first four rings done by the eldest person on board and the last four done by the youngest person on board (eight bells because it is the change of watch).

I spent the today looking round the bases, Halley V and the new Halley VI.  We also had a demonstration of the machine that is used to measure the thickness of the ozone layer, by the lead scientist.

For the summer season there is approximately 70 personell on base and in the winter that drops to a dozen or so. The winterers are mainly support staff, electricians, engineers, etc.

One of the reasons for moving to the new base is because there is a chance the piece of ice the old base is sat on will eventually break off and float away, also every year there is roughly 1.5m of snow accumulation so everything has to be either jacked up by 1.5m or continuously un buried and set on top. The new base is much easier to jack up and it is designed so it can be dragged to a new location.