Author: Brandon D'Andrea

Our transit to the Marshall Islands ended last week and we are now underway once again.  The second leg of my internship has officially started, in which we will be working with a science party from various universities to measure vertical turbulence and mixing in the surface layer of the central equatorial Pacific.  These small-scale phenomena play a large role in how heat is distributed across the tropical Pacific, which in part dictates how the ocean and atmosphere interact and subsequently influence the climate across the globe.

The science party is onboard now and eager to get their project started.  Despite our excitement, however, we had a mechanical setback in Majuro that pushed our departure date back a few days.  Furthermore, the ship has a refit period in Honolulu starting August 19th or so, meaning we cannot extend the cruise to compensate for the delay.  As a result, the science party has had to change up the game plan a bit, but we will still be able to collect plenty of data for ~10 days across 4 degrees of latitude near the equator.  We are all very excited and looking forward to arriving at out first sampling site (N 04° 00.000’  W 170° 00.000’) in 3 days and getting the the instruments in the water!  

Smooth seas and sunshine has been the theme of our cruise thus far.  I’d like to think I’ve adjusted to life at sea after a week, but we’ve been sailing in relatively sheltered waters until now so only time will tell.

It’s been a busy week of CTD maintenance and repairs. We started with redoing the cable termination, which provided me with my first real soldering experience.  I must say, soldering is more like an art than anything I’ve done so far and the experience of the MTs onboard became very evident when comparing their soldering jobs to mine.  Next, we removed and cleaned/inspected each of our 24 SBE bottles mounted on the carousel.  Each bottle was wiped down and any cracked O-rings or rusted circlips were replaced.  After the bottles were finished, we moved onto the carousel itself.  Unlike steel or titanium CTD frames, ours is an aluminum alloy that is light enough to house several instruments and still be under our cable’s max safe working load of 1.74 tonnes. However, the problem is that it needs a thermoplastic coat (to ensure trace metal analyses can be done) which eventually wears off and starts to peel.  Taking the bottles off our frame revealed a few spots needing repair, so we carried the frame into the staging bay and started grinding away (pictured above) at the worn coating and corrosion. The next step will be to heat the exposed metal to 150C and apply a new layer of powder coating, then it should be good to go! The issue here is that some spots are worn out completely around the frame (as seen in the picture) and the powder coating needs to be applied in an upright position, so we’ll have to either do the repair in very small sections (not ideal..), or try slowly rolling the frame down the hangar while hitting all sides of the repair with the heat gun and powder.  Either way, it will be a fun challenge!

Every part of this cruise has been a learning experience so far, and I hope it stays this way as we push forward to the Marshall Islands.  We’re set to arrive in Majuro next week, where we will stay for 4 days and prepare for the three-week science leg along the central equatorial Pacific. 

Two flights and 17 hours later, my journey from Honolulu to Singapore was complete. The RV Falkor was docked at the Harbourfront Centre terminal a few miles from the airport, and despite tripping on the gangway with my suitcase in hand (first time wearing steel toe boots…) my first day aboard was truly amazing.  Arriving in the early morning gave me a full day to get settled and go through the familiarizaiton/safety tour, as well as a welcome dinner on deck with some of the crew. They were all very fun and equally sarcastic, especially when I told them this is my first extended trip at sea…  The playful harrassment began as soon as they found out I’ll be crossing the equator AND the dateline on my first cruise (took many of them 10+ years to do this).  Nonetheless, I couldn’t be happier thus far and am very excited/anxious to get underway tomorrow morning. We have a 16 day transit to Majuro, where we will meet up with an oceanographic research group from the University of Hawaii (go bows!) and sail the rest of the way to Honolulu.

More to come next week!