Monthly Archives: December 2016

Wind and snow

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Weather:

  • A 30-35 knot N wind picked over night along with snow fall.Vertical North facing surfaces got some snow cover, everywhere else it blew off.
  • Visibility was less than a mile in the morning with fog horn sounding.
  • Seawater temp down to 8.5 C.

Maintenance:

  • cleared snow off lantern room window
  • communications with Kyle and technician re desalinator problems
  • communications with Kyle re diesel fuel level and delivery this week
  • request for wood stove gasket cement.
  • worked on cleaning and organizing in basement and consolidating obsolete items for removal

Other

  • DFO noted higher than normal seawater temps in Nov data set, requested that we take analog observations for the next five days to compare with digital measurements.

Supply run

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I went off station around 1000, brought in guest, picked up food/supplies and got back to station around 1530.

Weather: 10 knot South wind.

Maintenance:

  • wrote up report on desalinator high pressure pump problems.
  • unclogged toilet chute.

NE wind and tankers

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Weather:  

  • wind NE 25-30 knots, 3 ft chop
  • temperature remaining near or below freezing

Ecological: several tankers passed by the reserve today, a couple are photographed below.  As shown in the screen shot from MarineTraffic.com there were 5 tankers (red) across the straight, in Port Angeles, in the morning.screen-shot-2016-12-08-at-7-58-23

Maintenance:  continue to monitor water lines, running some heat tape overnight

Other: transcribed and sent off seawater data for the month of November

Freezing

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Weather:

  • 25-30 knot NE wind, clear sky.
  • temperature fell below freezing overnight, ground frozen in the morning.

Boats: 3 ecotour vessels in the afternoon, they all appeared to get within the DFO’s 100 m marine mammal setback guideline.

Maintenance:

  • checked on water lines and hooked up extension cables to heat tape on the fresh water tank and the main house fresh water inlet.  Dumped water from rain tank to avoid freezing valve. Drained cistern pump in derrick shed.
  • measured generator diesel levels, filled day tank.
  • started generator in the morning, ran for 3 hours before overspeed fault.  Ran again in the evening without overspeed.
  • chopped wood, cleared out firewood cutting jig

 

Freeze up coming

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A group of visitors from the college was planned to arrive around noon but the trip was canceled due to poor weather conditions.

Weather:

  • Fog horn started up at 1 am, light fog, didn’t last very long.
  • Wind NE 15-25 knots most most of the day.
  • The forecast is calling for temperatures to fall below freezing in the coming days.
  • Fresh snow visible along the coast in Metchosin

snow-dec-6-2

snow-dec-6-3

 

 

 

 

Maintenance:

  • Checked on exposed water lines, started up assistant house furnace to keep above freezing.
  • Did some clean up of blown off roof shingles, broken gutters, pipe, etc.
  • Ran derrick engine
  • Cleared boat ramp
  • Generator automatically shut down due to overspeed fault.
  • Requested new log peavey to replace old broken one.

Boats:

  • Photos below of The Argent Daisy, a chemical tanker, passing by Race Rocks.

 

clear sky, humpback

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Weather: steady west wind, 20-30 knots.  Mostly clear sky.

Ecological:

  • One humpback whale was visible near the reserve for several hours beginning around noon.
  • 3 Male elephant seals have been staying mostly on Great Race, traveling individually to middle rock occasionally.
humpback-dec-4

Humpback between North Rock and William Head

Maintenance: Flushed rainwater barrel pipe to cistern.

Boats: 1 ecotour, caused some disturbance of sealions near jetty as well as on South Islands.