Hello Good Readers!
Travel day 10/23
Leaving Iceland was bittersweet, as there was so much left unexplored, but by this point I was very anxious to fly to Greenland and meet the ship. After some of the usual airport shenanigans, I boarded the Dash 8-200 that would bring me to Nuuk. Roughly three hours and two time zones later we landed, and we were all grateful for a smooth flight and landing. From the airport it was a short taxi ride down to the harbor, where I got my first sight of the Armstrong, what a relief!
10/24
We left Nuuk at 08:58 local time. As we left the fog hid the scenery from us for a bit until we were far enough from land, and from there we could see the mountains of Nuuk peeking out from above the fog.
At the start of each cruise there are several sensors that must be started, and the techs set about showing me those systems. Even though this cruise is a transit, and there is no science crew or objective, the techs still run some of the sensors to gather general oceanographic data to be given to WHOI upon docking. Some of these include the multibeams to map the seafloor and the ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler).
This first week my main goals for this internship were to get my bearings onboard and shadow the other techs. As we went around turning on equipment they encouraged me to get involved, which led to my first slight mishap, while lowering the thru-hull SSV probe I managed to shear off two screws attaching the cap on the sleeve, but luckily the screws left in the cap could be backed out with side cutters.
Looking back at the week I am grateful those screws were the only thing I seriously broke!
*Insert obligatory joke about having a few screws loose here*
10/25
Even before I boarded the ship in Nuuk I was warned about the ride aboard the Armstrong. Here the techs lovingly describe it as spicy. In wave conditions of only 3 meters or so (average for the North Atlantic), the ship is rocking and rolling in every direction. It made for a sleepless night for everyone onboard, but this is nothing a constant supply of coffee can’t fix. Since the ship was rolling so much, we went out first thing to bring the CTD rosette into the CTD hangar on its track so it wouldn’t get bashed around too much. This revealed an issue with the motor that moved the cart, as the techs say, add it to the list! My first independent task was moving a camera in the main science lab to a different location on the ceiling, which only required some patience and some contorting to access the ceiling while the ship was rolling around. Of course moving a camera is never as simple as unplugging and plugging it back in, and it eventually needed to be reset completely to get back online and some additional coding fixes to optimize the view.
This is my first serious foray into coding beyond a class in high school, so in my spare time while the techs are working or having meetings I read up on “Linux coding for Beginners”.
Since the ride was so rolly I spent the rest of the day on an inside project, cataloging the spare sensors for the CTD, of which there are many! This includes an entire backup CTD,
so incase of any catastrophic failure of the main one, this secondary one can just be brought up and attached to the rosette. One of my main goals for this catalog was also to make note of the calibration dates, especially noteworthy for the secondary sensors, as they must also be kept relatively up to date if ever they need to be used on the main CTD. I finished cataloging those just in time to listen in on the weekly meeting with all the WHOI SSSGs aboard ships and shore services, which is extremely important to keep everyone in the loop on supplies needed onboard and current projects.
As Halloween is approaching, we finished off the day with a showing of Hocus Pocus after dinner, and will continue with spooky movies every night leading up to Halloween!
10/26
The waves calmed overnight so everyone had a good rest. I completed my catalog work with an additional inventory of the spare CTD sensor cables, which will be useful for the techs when they are in need of a specific cable with certain connections (there are about a million different terminal and pin combinations).
There’s a dedicated group of competitors onboard who race Mario Kart tournaments, and I’m sad to say my days of playing it on the Nintendo DS did not prepare me well and I lost in my first bracket match.
After lunch I assisted Emily in rewiring the .681 cable in the winch room. Where the wires originally came from the slip ring in to the pass through from the top, Emily had noticed some saltwater making its way in, so we moved the wires and reconnected them so they came in through the bottom of the pass through, hopefully preventing any more water from getting in and corroding the wires.
Halloween movie of the night: Corpse Bride!
I sometimes would go up to the bridge during the night watch to hang out and learn about the navigational systems, and earlier in the week the 3rd mate offered to call me up if she saw any aurora borealis, so when she called my room that evening I was very excited. Unfortunately by the time I got my boots on and went up, they had faded, but the skies were clear for a bit which made for excellent star-gazing. As we watched the stars for a bit however, even at night we noticed fog start to roll in…
10/27
The fog remained throughout the day, so even though we were steaming through the Belle Isle Strait, I saw no sight of land. However since the seas were calmer Emily set me up for some routine maintenance of the main CTD and associated equipment. We began by opening all 24 niskin bottles arranged around the CTD and checking the lanyards. Ones that were too loose were adjusted and those that were too tight were taken off and I cut new ones.
As there are so many bottles on the rosette, my work was interrupted mid-morning by the weekly safety drill. The techs are usually responsible for mustering the science crew together in the main lab with their life jackets and immersion suits, while the ship’s crew drilled on gearing up to fight a potential fire. Everyone has to be trained on getting into the immersion suits, and it was my time.
After lunch I finished with the niskin bottle lanyards. I also re-threaded some lanyards who’s paths to the bottom of the bottles could be improved to reduce friction. This was time consuming but satisfying when they were all at proper placements and tension in the end.
Tonight’s spooky movie was Freaked, which was not a horror movie per say, but came highly recommended by Sonia for its black comedy and crazy special effects.
10/28
The waves became more spicy last night into today, so the continuing outside CTD work has been moved to tomorrow. Luckily this left me with much of the morning to polish this blog! Other notable occurrences today will be when the ship passes by the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, located just south of Newfoundland. These islands have an exclusion zone that requires us to turn off all acoustics when we pass through. This zone is the result of a 1992 case of Canada vs France that allocated the French island territory its own EEZ within the Canadian EEZ, surrounding the islands and also including a 188 nautical mile corridor north-south, to allow ships to reach international waters without crossing into the Canadian zone. As it appears on charts, it looks like a keyhole or a runway.
Spooky movie of the night: The Conjuring!
Thank you all for the lovely comments!