There are only a few days left of science operations in this cruise. Mooring recoveries took up the first half of the week, and CTD casts filled the rest. I got to operate the mooring release deck box again for some of the recoveries. This time, we released the moorings from their anchors after establishing contact with them. The first release did not operate as smoothly as we would have liked. It didn’t respond to the release code, which was concerning. Turning up the deck box’s transmission power didn’t help. Fortunately, the mooring released after resetting the deck box and turning the transmission power down instead of up. Rather than help, the increased transmission power may have been causing echoes and confusing the release. Live and learn. With this experience, the remaining releases functioned much more smoothly. They all responded and released after just one or two tries, and the bridge spotted them soon after.
Some of the moorings didn’t have working releases, so they couldn’t be brought to the surface with an acoustic signal for retrieval. Instead, the deck crew lowered a grappling hook off the stern of the ship to drag for the mooring’s cable. As the ship was dragging, all eyes were on the winch’s tension display, waiting for the spike in the graph that would indicate we had caught the mooring. It took a few tries, but soon enough the hook was back on deck with the mooring cable attached to it.
On Wednesday, there was a holiday trivia night on the mess deck as a morale event. I was on a team with three Coast Guard crew members. A pair of socks, a trick-or-treat bag, superhero capes, and a plastic frog were the prizes for the winning team. There were Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas question rounds, along with more general ones. For most of the game, our team led by a significant margin. We were already talking about how we would split up the winnings. Unfortunately, we lost by one point in the final round. I’m still kicking myself for forgetting about the traditional Festivus Feats of Strength from Seinfeld, which was the answer to one of the questions we missed. Hopefully, we can get the team back together to redeem ourselves next week. There’s still time for a Festivus miracle.
Other than the next trivia night, there’s a lot to look forward to. Once the CTD casts are complete, we are scheduled to head north of the operating area to take measurements on sea ice! When the cruise began, the ice was still far away from our planned course. Satellite images show that it’s moved up significantly since then, and is now only a few hours’ journey from where we are. I’m excited to see the ice, but it also means the end of science operations and the beginning of the transit back south. There’s still a few weeks left in the cruise, but we’ll soon be leaving the Arctic.