Well, it’s been a week of much of the same as it has been for the past month for the most part. Getting the R/V Thompson ready for months of cruises, but for me its the last one. This trip is going down to “The Bar” at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. For those of you who don’t know about The Bar, it’s where the Coast Guard does their big wave rescue training. What are we doing there you may ask? Well, I will tell you. Originally, this was suppose to be a Scripps trip, but was past on to us. A laser has been mounted on the bow of the boat and it collects wave height, period data etc. at a very fast pace. More about that next week, as we are not even out of the Puget Sound yet.
As far as the past week, I started out by climbing the mast to take down a meteorological sensor. This system consisted of 3 parts, two remote sensors and a control box plus the wire that was used to control the sensors. The following day was spent calibrating more oxygen bottles, fun fun! Next was running more cat-5 cable to the new radar computer rack, which had to be snaked throughout the ship to get to its final destination. Also, I took down a rain catcher from the front of the boat.
Yesterday was spent cleaning the ship up from the last month and preparing for the next trip. Mostly storing old wire that we had pulled from within the ceiling tiles and putting all the tools we had used in their proper place. This morning we pulled away from the dock at around 0900 and made our way through the lock and dam and into the Puget Sound. Soon we will be in The Straight of Juan de Fuca, followed by the North Pacific. This has been a great experience, one of a lifetime, but I’m worn out and looking forward to seeing my girl and my dog! That being said this should be a great cruise spending the next two weeks going in and out of “The Bar”. Until next time-Brophy Out.