Leg 1 of SWERUS-C3 is over; Oden left her anchored position 5 km offshore Barrow, Alaska for Leg 2 on August 21. With help from Barbara Brooks, who is on Oden for Leg 2, our atmospheric methane measurements continue.
Although I haven’t written about our results per se, I can say that I’m quite happy with our instrument performance & the Leg 1 atmospheric methane measurements.

Leg 1 folks, including me, arrived on land in Barrow, Alaska, on August 20. There was talk before  SWERUS-C3 as to how we would get to Barrow, which was always the "exchange point" for the Leg 1 and Leg 2 crews. Originally the plan had been to hire a helicopter for crew exchange; often Oden carries a helicopter onboard, but does not for SWERUS-C3.



The problem is that there’s really no harbor in Barrow. So Oden anchored far offshore while a small  transfer boat ferried the Leg 1 folks to shore, whilst bringing Leg 2 folks aboard. There were four  passenger runs of the transfer boat; I was in the third wave. To board the transfer boat, we had to climb down a ladder (a bit like a fire-escape ladder) hanging over the port side of Oden. The ladder was  definitely a dramatic way to depart. The transfer boat slowly backed away from Oden, giving us our first view of the entire ship since Tromsø.


Then a short ride to shore – with most of us staring past the stern of the transfer boat towards Oden and not towards the Alaskan coast. The transfer boat beached itself on the Barrow shoreline. The scratchy sound of sand against the boat’s hull meant we’d arrived. We walked off the transfer boat, onto an Arctic Ocean beach covered with small pebbles that you easily sank into. It wasn’t the easiest beach to walk on. Suddenly, and I can't speak for anyone but myself, it felt surprisingly emotional to leave Oden and be onshore.

The physicalness of feeling land that gives under your feet, instead of steel or wood, was way more dramatic, at least for me, than leaving Oden via helicopter would have been. We really did walk ashore in Alaska after leaving Norway; I don’t think too many people have done that. And then there was Barrow for two days... Barrow really does seem like an “edge” of the United States; it’s a unique place.



As large ships don’t often visit Barrow, seeing a large vessel like Oden sitting several nautical miles offshore for several days attracted attention in town. We got several questions from townspeople about the expedition. (As many of us were wearing expedition jackets around town, we were easy to spot.)

But soon, it was time, and SWERUS-C3 Leg 1 really ended, and the group began to go our separate ways. On advice from Paul, I was watching for Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, during the flight to Anchorage. Denali was peeking through the clouds.



It was quite an adventure. Absolutely worth doing. Many things were learned: some were expected, some were not. Someday, perhaps, I’ll do something like this again.