1 Febbraio 2019

Continuing our studies on the peculiarities, or simply the curiosities enclosed in the perimeters of the Antarctic Research Bases , we came across a wooden building near the lighthouse of Arctowski Station (Pic aside).

The Polish Station in Antarctica has a lighthouse on the rock at Shag Point (62°09′28″ South, 58°27′56″ West) that provides navigational aid in Admiralty Bay. Its construction started in December 1977 and the lighthouse was operational on March 16th, 1978.

Recently, when browsing the web, we discovered very close the Rock that surmounts the lighthouse, a wood building. What is that, we asked?

In some websites it is called “Chapel” , in other websites it is called “Tourist and souvenir shop”, but what is the truth?

We put a question to our great friend Sebastien Gleich SQ1SGB, who kindly explains the story that now, we are happy to share:

Seba wrote: – Although it may seems a chapel, that house was a “Turist house”! Upon being established, its location was barely a dozen meters from the sea. Now, during high tide, it is less than a meter away. That little house, was build in 1998 from wood waste after the general rebuild of the Station. The main builders was Zubek brothers and Suszczewski, originator and chief builder of Arctowski.
We experienced that, the sea rises about 1meter shore per year….

During the 2016 Antarctic campaign, storm waves touched the house. Warsaw (Command Center) decided to demolish the house!
That year, it was one of the tasks in my expedition. I and couple friends took on the work to move it near the Station, so to rescue it from demolish. We did rise the complete building on round pieces of wood, then we slid them on huge sleigh, after having destroyed a couple of rocks by hammer because the road was too narrow (photo here in the Left). We did relocate the little house near the main station buildings (photo below to the Right).