Tanker!

When the Ice Breaker Oden breaks its way in the mood of the base changes from blah to we are almost out of here! You see alot of people in the computer lab finalizing travel plans and looking for there next crazy job.

This year the ice edge was about 60 miles out. The Oden makes its way in breaking a path for our fuel tanker and our supply ship.

Here she is breaking the ice up next to the pier.
And here is the Fuels Departments "dog and pony show" for the season. The USN Larrence H. Gianella. She had 5.5 million gallons of fuel for us. That fuel will keep everything at the South Pole Station and McMurdo running for the next year. That's right just one year!

While we were off loading our fuel the Oden snugged up next the Gianella and rested for a couple days .

We used 1200 feet of 6" hose per valve and as you can see we had 5 valves. Here are the Pier Valves where the hose connects to the hard line running up the hill to the bulk tanks on the other side of town.

Here is the other end of the 1200 ft hoses connected to the tanker valves. That's Tonya in brown making sure everything goes smooth on the boat. Each hose was under 100PSI and moving 1800 to 2400 GPM. If something was to happen the hose it would have gone bad quick and made a big mess.
Here are the numbers for this year. We worked 12 hr shifts so we had 24hr coverage.
Mogas: 121,353 AN8: 4,928,693 JP-5: 486,294 Gallons
Start time: 1/22/09 15:31pm
Stop time: 1/24/09 7:25am
Total time: 40 hrs
We moved over 5.5 million gallons of fuel without incident.