Today I assembled the back-up CTD fish! I was super pumped to assemble all of the sensors on that thing. We probably won’t have to use it but it still made me happy.
The following day, I was still working on the CTD but just the wiring portion. After I finished with the wiring I used a software called seasave to create a new configuration file for the fish. Within the new file I had to import the configuration files for each of the instruments attached to the fish brain. Because we don’t have enough DO’s or another transmissometer, we use the configuration files from the instruments on the primary fish that is already attached to the rosette. After the config file was created and completed Marine Technician, Austin, assisted in helping check the voltage on the back up fish and made sure that the fish was talking to the deck box.
HA! The fish was talking to the deck box and everything seemed to exhibit the values we expected…. except there were no voltage values. So, we had to go through a long process to figure out what was going on and why it was happening by gutting all the nicely wrapped cables, swapping them around, testing resistance with the multimeter and more… it kind of hurt seeing the fish being disassembled. It hurt more when we finally found that the problem had a simple solution (reorienting one single cable). In hindsight it was pretty comical… my first taste of what it’s like being a marine tech I guess?
The arrival of the science party has been delayed two days due to weather. Our echo sounders are turned off and the only thing we are monitoring is the SSW. Long day due to the lack of projects so I read up on some of the science party’s SOPs. Movie night in the science lounge (all of the Matrix) accompanied by some ship rolls.
Next morning in the lab, it’s starting to get pretty cold. My fellow intern is starting to disappear in his hoodie. Right now, all you can see is his nose. We are still waiting out the weather and many people are still trying to get over their sea sickness. There was a page sent out to everyone directing them to the doc for some medications as a result, mess deck was pretty quiet during lunch. Can’t wait for science!!
August 4th is the day the scientist make way for the ship! The Healy is too fat to pull into a Nome pier so the personnel exchange is primarily done through small boat opps. There was a slight delay because one of the boats stopped working… I think they are still trying to get small boat opps back to the ship, they’re kind of just spinning in circles. The first arrival of scientist was on a water taxi, which Roy (the last of our original tech group) used to depart to the island. Everything is busy and exciting. So many new faces and land energy!
Later that night The Healy ran an abandon ship drill. Everyone has a job and a designated raft, my job was to gather blankets, Ami’s was to gather the food (since it’s a drill we didn’t actually have to haul a bunch of food and blankets out to the flight deck). After everyone huddled up with their raft family, they announced that the new Healy personnel had to try on the float suits, which are big and orange and swallow you whole. Feels like being hugged by a balloon.