Hello everyone,
It has been a very busy few days here so I will do my best to recap some of the highlights. It all started on Thursday when I flew into beautiful Hawaii. I was picked up from the airport and shuttled out to the RV Kilo Moana where I got enough of a tour to find my room, the food, and the emergency exit and then I was off to bed. Friday I started that gloriously awkward stage (which I am absolutely still in) where I don’t know what is going on so I mostly just follow other people around and introduce myself all day. Poor Sonia! She was the tech that led me around and babysat me all day. We ended up replacing the central piston and several sensors from the CTD device which took us the entire day. It was hot and sweaty and required a lot of climbing in, up, and under the CTD carriage. It was actually pretty fun:)
The the weekend happened…and really no one else was here. So I managed to use that time to sit out in the sun and climatize (AKA sunburn) and explore some more of the vessel in hopes that I could get down some of the bizarre layout. I’m honestly still working on that one though.
So Monday we finally left the harbor with a group of scientists ready to take some samples and the whole week of working with them was mostly a blur. I learned the procedure for deploying the CTD (and a few other items) over the side of the vessel using the giant winch and A-frame set-up. It is a lot of fun to get the CTD into the water and recover it again. It involves hooks on poles and everything:) I have also been trying to learn how to tie some real sea-worthy knots and apparently I am terrible at it. At this very moment I have a string in my pocket to keep practicing. I do really well with the string when I start with it in the same orientation but on deck I am often forced to tie that same type of knot backwards or left-landed or in some other weird way. And yes…I’m terrible at it…to the amusement of my mentor…but hopefully getting better:)
By Friday morning we had made it back into Honolulu and I was able to get through some of the end-of-cruise procedures. Mostly just shutting down different systems and compiling all of the data collected over the course of the trip. Nothing too crazy so far.
With the end of the cruise AND a Friday to boot it didn’t take long for people to scatter. Another quiet weekend here. Because I spent so much of this first trip out just trying to learn every little thing that I could I didn’t spend a whole lot of time taking pictures…or writing a blog:/ I am hoping to do much better on both counts as I get better at this and more used to the schedule. Seriously…I will work on it.
Until next post (with pictures…sigh)
Elizabeth