We were wondering if our camp was even going to be there when we returned on Monday. Bad weather had prevented us from flying out there on Thursday and Friday, and more bad weather had pounded the area on Saturday. As the helicopter approached our camp, we were anxiously looking out the windows.

Yay! Our tent is still there (just a little up and to the right of center - click to enlarge - it really is there)

Uh-oh, something doesn't look right

It turns out that Condition 1 weather is serious stuff. Almost all of the tent poles were bent in some way, while the tent walls had great tears across them.  We had set the tent up rather well, but since nobody had been around during the bad weather, we didn’t have a chance to monitor things and fix problems if they occurred. We now had a new door on the side of the tent – much more convenient than the old door for getting stuff out. We found tent poles about 100 meters away from the tent. Some ice screws that were tightly holding equipment down were now almost loose from the ice melting and/or being abraded by the wind.

Bob inspects the damage

One of the many bent poles

The wind tries its hand at tying knots

Somehow I think the repair kit (small ziplock at bottom) isn't up to the task

Lucky for us, though, all of our equipment survived in good condition, and SCINI was still sitting where we had left her. Amazing! It’s almost as if the last gust of the bad weather was what destroyed the tent. Bob managed to make a half tent out of what was left – cutting the shock cord in some of the poles and making new poles out of the unbent portions.

SCINI is alive! This is actually how we found it - pretty amazing

Bob makes a smaller tent

We managed to get work done after all this! We’re only down here for two more weeks, so every day is precious.  We drilled new navigation holes, which worked out much better than the previous dive. These holes were further away and we dropped the transducers deeper in the water. This seemed to help. It might also have been that we were able to drill a reasonable triangle, which helps the navigation software have enough information to determine our location underwater.

Camp as we finish packing up, getting ready for the helicopter

We had a lot of work to do at the end of the day, since the tent was coming back with us. I think it took about an hour and a half to pack everything up. Even with all the extra work today, we were happy that our equipment survived the storms and we were able to keep working away. May all your clouds have such silver linings!