We continued on with more handover stuff and at one o’clock
a black start test was performed on the power house which resulted in a major
incident with one of the four alternators releasing a lot of smoke having a
meltdown. Everybody had to muster as a fire alarm was activated and the fire
team was assembled. The situation was brought under control and everybody on
muster was stood down, but all electricians had to attend the scene. During
this time the whole station was running on various UPS systems and eventually
one by one the batteries started to go flat and we started losing services. I
quickly put a generator on some of our comms equipment to maintain
communications as we had helicopters in the air and the resupply was still
taking place. After two hours the emergency generator was on line and stable
and we started mopping up systems.
I think I learnt more in those two hours
than in the past week. All electricians and diesel mechanics worked long and
hard to get the blown alternator replaced with the spare in the green store and
commissioned. They did a great job getting it replaced and everything back to
normal. Some of the expeditioners were having second thoughts and continually
looking at the red ship in the harbor.
In the evening we all got together for
the handover ceremony. The outgoing station leader gave a speech and gave each
of the outgoing winter expeditioners service medals and the incoming station
leader was given the huge symbolic keys to the station. That night many beers
were downed, guitars came out and the nutty physics professor sang his version
of “wild thing”. It was a good night with many sore heads the following day.
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