Today is our 15th day at sea. By now, I’m deep in my watch standing rhythm and the days have started blending together. This week, I’ve averaged 3 cups of coffee, 2 cups of tea, 75 twisties chips, and about 100 pages of Stephen Ambrose’s New York Times Bestseller, D-Day (borrowed from the ship’s library) a day.
We’ve completed our first cluster of OBS deployments so we have a lot more downtime as we cruise back and forth along the North Fiji Basin collecting bathymetric data. The magnetometer has still been putting up trouble; a few days ago, the 300 meter winch towing the instrument failed so we had to pull it in by hand while we prepared for an OBS deployment (this was the second occasion of such a task). It was nice to supplement the exercise I’ve been getting in the ship’s gym. Using the rowing machine in swell kind of turns it into a roller coaster.
In between deployments, we’ve been learning general technician skills from Liz and Andy. I’m happy to report that my time spent as a youth playing video games has given me some great background in learning the ins and outs of IT networking. I also got intimately acquainted with how to terminate an ethernet cable when I wired it wrong 3 times in a row. Beyond that we’ve also practiced soldering wires and configuring network switches. I love when the techs give us a task to complete and leave us to figure out how to get it done. Sometimes it takes me a lot longer than it should but I feel like I learn the best when I’m left to my own devices to solve a problem.
In addition to our technical duties, we’ve also been joining the science party for daily science presentation, where we rotate through sharing ongoing or past science projects. It’s forced me to brush up on my tectonics and I now feel more confidant discussing subduction zones than I ever have before. I also got to refresh my own presentation skills as I discussed some of my past work. I tried to remember Shakespeare’s maxim, “brevity is the soul of wit” but I also do love to hold the floor. In all seriousness, it was great to practice speaking about my research experience to a scientific audience.
All in all, it’s been a great week with calmer seas and good weather. The seas are forecasted to come up from a storm blowing out of the Tasman Sea so I’m glad I’ve been taking advantage of sunsets on the aft deck—I’m not sure how many more of them I’ll get.
Oh also, I made it onto the instagram! Cruise is a huge success.
Leave a Reply