My first attempt at blogging

Whataroa River looking west toward drilling site

 

Saturday November 1^st 2014

Flying in to Dunedin

I arrived in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand at approximately 4 p.m. local time.  This corresponded to 10 p.m. of October 31^st Oklahoma time.  Having boarded my plane in Los Angeles on October 30^th, I realized I completely missed any of October 31^st, 2014.  This will be used as a trivia question for my family and children later in life.  “How is it possible to leave one place on a specific date and arrive two days later but only after traveling for 13 hours?”  This has to be the closest to time travel that I will ever experience.  Getting out of the airport I was met by a University of Otago student, Genevieve Coffey.  She was very friendly but seemed quite nervous to be driving me back.  We hit up a conversation about our studies and continued on to downtown Dunedin.  I arrived at her flat that she shares with 5 other students.  The students have a variety of backgrounds including biology, dentistry, zoology, geochemistry, and of course geology.  Genevieve showed me to my room and had to leave for Uni.  I quickly took a shower and headed out to find dinner and see a bit of Dunedin.  My first stop was to grab a power converter and my second stop was the local pub.  As soon as I had a charge on my phone I began walking around Dunedin.  The people on the street were quite young and friendly.  I walked past a few of the cathedrals that are slightly famous in the area but did not have a chance to enter them.   I found a café with Wi-Fi and soon received an email from another Otago student stating that weather dependent, we would be heading to the west coast early Sunday morning.  I then grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the flat to try to sleep.

Chapel in Dunedin

Chapel in Dunedin

  

 

Sunday, November 2^nd, 2014

Landslide slowed traffic on the way to Whataroa

Loren Matthewson arrived at Genevieve’s flat around 9:30 a.m. to drive me to the west coast, Whataroa.  This is where the Deep Fault Drilling Program – 2 would be taking place.  The weather was beautiful in Dunedin with a temperature around 80 degrees and blue skies.  I was thinking to myself that I got lucky and get to miss most of the bad winter weather in Oklahoma.  Oh how that changed quickly.  We drove west toward the Southern Alps, Loren was telling me their weather changes quickly and they can always tell if bad weather is coming based on the direction of the wind.  Well, an hour into our drive as we were driving through central Otago where the Lord of the Rings had been filmed, the weather hit hard.  It began raining around 2 p.m. that afternoon and did not stop the entire 9 hour drive.  This is common on the west coast of New Zealand.  Weather fronts from the Southern Sea hit the southwestern edge of New Zealand which is comprised of the tall Southern Alps.  The Alps push the front up the mountains and forces the rain to fall.  Soon the dry central Otago region turned into a lush rainforest.  We could only see a few 100 meters in front of us due to the heavy rainfall.  We arrived in Whataroa, pronounced Fataroa by the New Zealanders, at approximately 7 p.m. on Sunday evening.  My accommodations included a 3 bedroom house 2 blocks from the main logistics house of DFDP-2.  I share a room with two guys from Liverpool England.  Both are PhD students working on the Alpine Fault.

                Every evening at 7:15p.m. Dinner is served at the logistics house, so as soon as I dropped my bags we walked the 2-3 blocks down in the heavy rainfall.  I was introduced quickly to the people that were there and learned that most of the people had left recently to do some site seeing.  I also learned that the Bottom Hole Assembly had snapped the wireline and was stuck at the bottom of the hole.  The drilling crew had never had to fish for tools before and had been using handcrafted tools to try to raise 7 tons of pipe and BHA.  This was obviously not working.  Everyone was telling me how tense things had been on site and how lucky they were no one was killed.  Ray, who manages the logistics of the operation, was telling me that once the cable snapped it did a whip around the entire drilling rig where everyone should have been standing but luckily no one was.  My introduction to everyone was quite nice.

Monday, November 3^rd, 2014

Drill site location

The rain continued Monday but more people began to arrive back after their short vacation away.  Most people on-site have been on site since early October or even late September.  I met Virginia Toy, Rupert Sutherland, John Townend, and Dave Prior all today.   Very friendly people and very excited that I had the opportunity to come and join the operation. Ray then decided to take me to the drill site to get my safety training done so that I could legally be on site.  This consisted of showing me the hazard areas and a basic tour of the drill site.  I was provided safety glasses, a hard hat and told I needed to buy rain pants due to the high amounts of rain the area gets, and yes it is STILL raining. Since the rig is fishing for the BHA, security shifts are being assigned and my first assignment was given to me.  3 a.m. to 7 a.m.  I will be manning the security station with Betty, she is a structural geologist Professor out of Liverpool.  She was born in Italy and did her MS and PhD in Great Britain.  The security shift was not bad at all and went by quickly as she was very interesting to talk to and told me quite a bit about what a typical day consists of in Whataroa but things will change once we start drilling again.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Outcrop used for additional project

Point bar in outcrop

Today, Virginia Toy is taking me, Betty, Mike, and another student to see possible outcrops I can study for my project for Dr. Slatt because it has FINALLY STOPPED RAINING.  The first outcrop was across the river from where the drilling is taking place.  We drove along the river through the local farmer’s cow pollocks for about half a kilometer before having to stop.  Then hiked up to a massive fresh outcrop.  It is enormous with text book point bar systems.  Virginia then has the idea of comparing what I find here, composition wise, and comparing it to what was taken by core early in the drilling program.  I am already intrigued with this idea.  The next stop we make is a few kilometers south of Whataroa.  It is on the same property as DFDP-1 on Gaunt Creek.  We had to cross Gaunt Creek which was knee high and moving rather quickly due to the heavy rains from the previous two days.  We all made it across without incident but came upon the WaitaTona River.  I learned quickly that Virginia Toy will do just about anything if someone says it shouldn’t be done.  The river was very high and moving quickly, she talked Mike into testing the waters to see if we could cross to find an appropriate outcrop for my project and of course, Mike could not say no.  They waded in about knee deep before Virginia got too cold and too close to swept away before turning back.  I am not going to lie, I was happy we all didn’t have to cross. 

Gaunt Creek meets the WaiaTona River

 

The Alpine Fault Gouge is the light grey in the above picture

                Everyone is getting very sick with colds or allergies.  Virginia has also come down with something along with about half of the rest of the camp.  I hope this passes me by.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Mount Cook

Today was a beautiful day on the west coast of New Zealand.  I woke up a bit late and walked to the logistics house.  As soon as I arrived, the French logging team asked if I would like to join them on a walk near the coast.  I was thrilled to get the chance to see more of the country so I agreed to join them.   The team is comprised of a logging engineer, two geophysicists, and a supervising wireline logger.  They are all from France and tend to stick around each other, so I was thrilled for them to ask me to join.  We drove about 15 minutes to a town called Okarito. This town consisted of about 5 summer homes and a shop.  We parked and began our hike up the trail.  I can only think of a few places in the world where you can be hiking up a mountain trail with the beach behind you.  The views we saw at the top of this trail were absolutely amazing.  To my west we had Mt Cook towering over us at 14,000 ft and to my east was the Tasmanian Sea.  Neither of these two things I thought I would ever see in my lifetime.  We sat at the top for 30 minutes taking in the view before heading down the trail.  I was this close to the ocean so I was not leaving without putting at least my hands in the water.  I convinced the logging team to walk to the beach.  It was a dark grey to black sand with large metamorphic rocks that were very smooth and rounded.  Much like river rocks but right on the beach.  The waves were quite large and the water was extremely cold.  I officially stepped foot into the Tasmanian Sea.  We left for Whataroa soon after due to my security shift beginning at 3 p.m.  Lunch is provided for us every day and word has gotten out that I am handy in the kitchen.  The three cooks approached me as soon as I got back from Okarito telling me Virginia had told them I know how to cook gumbo and they asked if I was willing to cook for everyone next Wednesday so that the cooks can have a day off and go listen to a concert.  I agreed and hope that I can meet everyone’s expectations.

                On a side note, I learned that New Zealand is actually continental land and not a volcanic arch system like previously thought.  Most of the continent is below water, just a little FYI.

Visiting the ocean and mountains

The BHA was removed from the borehole this afternoon.  The drilling team has now began lowering a huge magnet downhole to try to capture any metal scraps that might interfere with the drill bit once drilling commences.  The plan as of now is to make sure the hole is clean and then run logging tools downhole before circulating mud and as they begin to circulate mud.  This is will give them important temperature data and will locate any fractures that might have occurred during the falling of the BHA.  The local seismometers recorded the BHA falling and hitting bottom.  Another interesting thing that was talked about is that the gas chromatographer saw a change in helium directly after a 4.5 earthquake in land from where the drilling is taking place.  They are not sure it’s due to the earthquake because of the distance between the epicenter and our location but they found it very interesting.

Thursday, November 6th, 2014

Today has been a quiet day around Whataroa.  The drilling team has removed most of the debris from the borehole and the wire line team was able to run gamma, magnetic susceptibility, temperature, and BHTV (borehole televiewer) tools.  The new drilling bit should arrive tonight or early in the morning and drilling can resume.  Assignments during drilling are starting to be assigned and I will be split between a few assignments.  Labeling and documenting the cuttings will be my main gig and I also volunteered to be taught how to make thin sections from the cuttings.  Thin section production is something all of the students at the University of Otago have to learn, which I found quite interesting.  I don't believe OU offers such training or if they do I have never heard of it.  We typically send our samples off to a lab for our thin sections to be made.  I hope that this technique they use here will aide me in my masters research and teach me a method that could benefit our research.  It has not been possible before to make thin sections from our samples because of how fragile they are so we will see if it is possible.  My time today has been spent volunteering for little jobs no one else really wants to do.  This led to my first real adventure in New Zealand.  I drove a car! not just drove a car but drove a car on the left side of the road from the right side of the car and it was a stick shift!  It was a short commute but still quite exciting, I guess I can check that off the ol' bucket list.


       The group of scientist here come from places all over the world which is quite amazing.  Most of the students are PhD students which makes me feel quite lucky to be here at all.  There are students from Canada, Japan, England, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Italy, and the US and New Zealand of course.  It makes for interesting conversation around dinner time.  Last nights topic was whose "English" was correct out of the English, New Zealanders and Americans.  All the students who have been taught English learn the American version, so they tend to agree with the way we speak and I also learned that the American language is a lot more logical than the New Zealand and England versions of the language.  But I will give it to the English come back of the night from Jack, "We created the language so therefore my version is the correct version". Not really an argument there.