Ardery Blizzards

(2-Apr-1997)
Life in the brewery

Editorial
In the Ardery Blizzard Head Office, life has calmed down after all the excitement of the firing of the full editorial board in January. The full ashtrays, half empty coffee mugs, and the empty beer cans all over the place have disappeared. Pictures and drawings of Dutch origin were stripped of the walls. Soon a new orderly chaos was created in which the work was continued.

For us, the new editors, it will be hard to equal the writings and follow the footsteps in the snow of the former chief editor Jan van Franeker. Slowly his fame is melting away, but his stories stay. We are very happy to continue the only electronic newspaper of Ardery Island. We will stick to the old name as a blizzard comes always fast and unpredictable.

So we will probably be publishing irregularly: sudden and unexpected, even unwanted, but as an essential phenomena of the Antarctic environment. Often light is on in the head office till deep into the night because our reporters have a busy job, they write, but also make the stories themselves.

This beginning of this edition was written long ago and publishing proved to be difficult, although there have been enough blizzards for writing a few new issues. Printing press problems due to the new "fore front technology" that was installed on Ardery after V4, did not "cut the edge" despite many efforts by Casey Comms.

In this issue also some old news is inserted, to give an impression about life on a wonderful island. Despite being somewhat out-dated we hope we can easily match the dirty teacups in the science-corner, occasional three-course menus, lost watches in the gym, stolen phone books and other trivial news that normally fills your email.

Rain or shine, sleet or snow,
the editors.

Dear caseyites and other readers,
The great news this week was the evacuation of the Ardery Island people in the Eastern weekend. In the second half of March much sea-ice was formed, so thick that on Ardery they were talking about skating races on the ice. Sea-ice closed Casey's Wharf, with 28cm as the last report. Surprisingly strong South-Easterly winds and high tide in the Newcomb Bay gave the Navy-guys encouragement to re-commence their surveying work. Saturday 29 March they launched their Wyatt Earp for some surveying and to rescue the Ardery people along the way. They went and were probably regretting it when they got stuck for a few hours in a band of ice-floes with Ardery in sight. On Ardery, they were wondering if Wyatt Earp had stopped to do a spot of fishing? In reality they were working very hard to reach Ardery. Exploring the waters north of Ardery, they learned that the water was to refreeze and a quick embarkation of the scientific gear and personnel was needed. The way back was rather uneventful apart from a bit of delay in the ice and breaking the steering line. Many thanks guys for all efforts to get us back! It is great to spend two weeks with you all on Casey.

More good news was celebrated with a nice bottle of defrosted red wine two nights before. The late proposal for Oliver to stay overwinter that came reasonable fast through the paper-machineries at Kingston was approved. It will become even more busy in the home-brewers room, now the Ardery Is master-brewer himself will be present.

LIFE IN THE BREWERY
Immediately after arrival on Ardery half January Oliver showed his enthusiasm and work mentality. In addition to the routineous bird checks he brought some "life in the brewery", as we say in Dutch, by turning the Dutch Ovens into the Ardery Brewery. After reading all the stories of resupplying the island, he decided the diminish the load uphill drastically, by making made preparations for the new Ardery Brew. After a few days the work was ceased as he simply stated: "it's too cold here!".

GINA THE GINGER LADY OF ARDERY
Although the temperatures didn't rise, an inventive heating system by George brought the Ardery Brewery finally into full swing. The Ardery Brewery is producing quality brewed liquors from matured Antarctic ice water. The first batch is from an old rediscovered secret recipe which blends a mix of quality yeasts and spices combined with a new technique of cold filtering to produce a Ginger Beer of approximately 20%.

DRESS CODE
Oliver was surprised about the dress code and standard which was more "relaxed" than what he have previously been accustomed to. As warm water is difficult to come by, often items of daily wear have to be tenderized with a hammer in the morning due to the build-up of bird excrements, mud and ice. Our ANARE issue ties are still reserved for special occasions. But during a visit from Rex (our director of the Antarctic Division), however, we were unable to use them as they were temporarily being used as rope abrasion protection on the cliff face to the Antarctic petrel colony.

THE PETREL PROJECT ON ARDERY
In earlier issues of the Blizzards the petrel project on Ardery was described. For the new readers I will summarize it in a few lines. We checked daily several colonies of four species of petrels (Antarctic, Snow, and Cape petrel, and the Southern fulmar) that breed on Ardery. We injected 300 birds with transponders in the two study species: the antarctic petrels and the southern fulmars. Transponders look like microchips which can be read in the field with a antenna-reader. In the Fulmar and the Antarctic petrel colony we installed in total 37 artificial nests. These nests give every five minutes the weights of the birds or chicks sitting on that nest and the readings of the transponders. Unfortunately there hasn't been time left for analysis of the 200,000 recorded weightings.

LIFE AND DEATH
On 15 January all the Antarctic petrels eggs in the study area hatched. Our reporter of the Ardery Blizzard was present when the last chick mustered enough courage to crawl into the real world. It cracked the shell, hid its head for a while in the warm shelter and then stepped forward into a new hard life. When it was left alone by it's parents, and weeks later it was very vulnerable by it's isolated position. One day a skua was looking appetizingly to this tender chick-meat, but left it untouched. But on the 11th of February we discovered that another hungry skua or giant petrel couldn't resist the temptation.

ARDERY CHALLENGE
This year the classic Ardery swimming contest was held on the 24th of January. The trophy will stay on Ardery as Oliver and Jeroen equalled the first place. Oliver nearly finished the 50m up and down in Ardery's harbour almost before Jeroen finally got into the water. As only the distance determines the winner Jeroen covered in his typical style the same distance. This record and the successful defrostation of the extremities was celebrated with a chilled homebrew that was waiting for the winners in the ice. No more new contests were held by lack of participants. Sally, who is often around in the tournament-area regularly invited us for a new match, but it is hard to convince her that seals are excluded from competition. An non-official attempt in emersion suit was made by Bruce#1 who after two full days of physical exercise with bird-catching work thought to be in good condition to break the record. After half a meter he gave up and swam back to the IRB who was waiting for him to bring him back to Casey.

REST ON CASEY
Jeroen, since the beginning of this year staying on Ardery Island, needed a bit of rest back on station at the end of February. Two long nights later he was happy to be transported back to his island to have a rest from this tiring station life. Just after his arrival and a very long hot shower he bumped into the BBQ. The freezing cold was easily forgotten by the wonderful stout, a secret recipe from Oliver. The next day a big international Antarctic Olympics was organized by the Navy guys. At once Jeroen was surrounded by Maori warriors, German terrorists, Russian lady's, men wearing kilts, Jamaican rastafi's, etc. The Europeans, with Jeroen as member, were scoring rather constantly as number last. The limbo-dance was easily won by the elastically Jamaican Wildman. Elasticity was also tested in a game called "twister" where limbs of different origins are bundled in a chaotic bunch of bodyparts. All the frustration of their ranking came out in a very spirituated Maori dance, which Europe glorious won. After that they showed their real mentality with the last game "pie 'n piss" which is about to gorge and to booze as fast as possible. After the starting shot the Europeans poured each other a glass of wine, laid down their mess and fork, wrapped a napkin in their collar and waited patient for the first one to finish the pie. And as he happened to be a vegetarian, they were not getting far.

APHRODISIAC
During chick-banding period Simon helped the bird-team. Soon his ventiles were orange-coloured by bird-spit. As he was very impressed by the smell of the young petrels he thought it could work as an aphrodisiac. He experimented, without success on some of the more prettier new arrivals from voyage 5. So he had to gave his new line of Ardery-SPA (Spitting Petrel Aphrodisiac)-deodorants.

LIFE AND DEATH(2)
Unfortunately it had been a very good Skua-chick year. Twelve breeding pairs raised 11 chicks, which may partly explain the very low breeding success of the antarctic petrels (1 chick out of 30 eggs) and the fulmars (10 chicks out of 47 eggs). This means there were not many chicks left for my "weight watchers"-project with the artificial nests. The snowies, whose nests are more protected, seemed to have suffered less. In both colonies about 60% of eggs produced chicks.

THE LAST VISITOR ON ARDERY
Sam, one of the weather forecasters, came to Ardery Island in the beginning of March to learn predicting the weather from the fulmars on Ardery. He replaced Oliver, who went out for a well-deserved ski-holiday in the hills around Casey. Sam was prepared for everything (apart from the portage up the hill) and brought his own spirits bar with him, study books for during blizzes, and stacks of clothes. Every night he tried to have a glass of water next to his comfortable bed. He was not really prepared for temperatures inside an apple, where water quickly transforms to a more solid state. Also outside the apple, water freezes, he noted the last day when he had to leave Ardery. In a very rough run the rubber duckies broke slowly through the ice, but departing the island posed them for serious problems. It took them almost an hour of frantic efforts and thoughts of being stranded on Ardery before they made any actual headway towards open water.

This will be the last Ardery Blizzard of this season as we will enjoy the luxuries of Casey till Voyage 6 comes in. We like to thank all the expeditioners at Casey, the expeditioners before V4 who will be swarmed off the mainland by now, and all the people at Kingston and in Holland who helped us during this season. It was great to receive so much support in many ways!

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This issue was brewed by your delirious dedicated
Bird and Beer Watchers Team
Jeroen Creuwels-Oliver Hentschel
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