Tweety

Posted by Lisa at 11:45 PM, June 18, 2005

Hughie the helicopter pilot © Greenpeace

I got to sleep at about 2am and woke up at 7am for no apparent reason except maybe because we're in Iceland! There are whales and volcanoes and glaciers here and these are not things, which make you want to stay in bed.

Today was a glorious day and I think I am even a little sun burnt. Who would believe Iceland could be this hot? This leads me straight to the topic of climate change....

The glaciers in Iceland are retreating but scientists often don’t have the money to measure this effectively so Greenpeace is helping some glaciologists here get the data they need. The best thing we have to offer is a bright orange helicopter called Tweety and a Scottish helicopter pilot called Hughie.

Unfortunately the departure of Tweety from the deck of the ship was delayed because the fuel pump had a major pumping problem in that it was not pumping any fuel anywhere. While I was waiting to capture an m.peg movie of Tweety taking off I thought I would look around the ship since I only knew where my cabin was and how to find the galley. That’s not actually too bad but just as I was discovering the toilets a ray of sunshine with a giant smile popped out from one of the rooms and offered to show me around. It was Thom the radio operator who was the first friendly face to greet me on the ship and who is now bouncing off the walls in the server room, where I am writing this. He’s definitely got the most energy and enthusiasm of the crew, which must be fairly unique to still have after 15 years of working for Greenpeace on ships. He’s an optimist who would actually like to be described as “shy”.

Martin and Erika went with Magnus, the Icelandic scientist, in the helicopter to look at a glacier while I stayed on the ship and took lots of photos and got to know the crew a little better. Many people drove up to the ship today to look at it and volunteers handed out leaflets to them through their car windows. We also had an open ship and about 30 or so people were able to come on board and get a full tour. I even gave someone a tour myself and talked to a few tourists who came by the ship in the early evening. After hearing about the stuff we were doing here, they were very keen to support Greenpeace, which is always good to hear. Today I really started to feel a part of the team and am looking forward to taking that one step further by joining the cleaning rota on Monday. Oh joy!

Watching Tweety take off and land again on the ship was certainly the highlight of the day. I’ve got a great little movie of the lift off, which will hopefully be up on this site soon.

Tomorrow we have an open ship from 1pm-5pm. All are welcome, even whalers!

L.