Back to station sampling!

We are finally getting back on the sampling track here. The Gould came and picked up some great people to bring them back to Punta Arenas. It was sad, but we all kept our heads up and a lot of us jumped off the pier to give our best wishes to our friends. As sad as this leaving was it opened up some new opportunities for us. The boats exit from Palmer randomly signaled the winds to start moving the ice out. By afternoon we have enough ice out of the way to sample from station B, with a little pushing of some ice blocks. This was the first time we have sampled from a station in the harbor in ten days; yep that is what happens with the weather down here. Never expect anything! The ice continued to clear and on Christmas morning Santa delivered a perfectly clear station E. Now it was Christmas, and we all took that into account but we had not sampled from station E in 20 days. There is always too good of a chance for the wind to switch direction and leaves us without samples from E for another 20 days. So we went. It was beautiful.