The day after my last post the sound of the boat’s engine turning on woke me up and I rushed to the bow to see us off. It felt surreal to watch the land recede behind us, but it also felt so natural. As we did safety drills and briefings throughout the day, everything followed easily and seemed normal. Somehow, existing on this ship doesn’t feel as intimidating as I thought it would.
Somehow, the schedule of working on Alvin has become normal already. We’re normally at work at 5:30am, do pre-dive checks on the sub until 8 (sometimes we have time to grab breakfast in between). During the time between wake up and launch, I am primarily doing the “extra guy duties”, so I prepare the everything to go into the sub (all the towels, food, cameras, etc) and then prepare the external cameras. At 8, the sub rolls out, and then I assist with adding ballast to each side and attaching pressure relief valves to the battery oil knobs (without those pressure relief valves, the hydrogen produced by the batteries could be enough to blow the battery cases).
Because of how short Nick and my time on the boat is, we aren’t able to get trained on any of the more specialized jobs (which I’m slightly disappointed about, mostly because the water looks amazing, and I really want an excuse to get in). However, it is still beyond magical to watch this 23 ton chunk of titanium and oil be lifted into the air as if it weights nothing. No matter how many videos I watched, I still didn’t feel ready for how amazing it was to see it lifted off the ground.
Our first dive day has been my favorite so far because 7 squid got stuck in various parts of the sub. I certainly feel bad for the squid, but it was incredible to hold them and to see how big they were. Later that day, I watched some of the footage from the dive and it was amazing to see the cloud of squid surround the sub and know that I had held one of the ones from he video.
The sunsets out here have been incredible. I have always loved sunsets, but seeing them completely unobstructed is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Because we frequently work through sunset, I am almost always outside during sunset. I think that that is one of the things that I will miss the most. Even though I am surrounded by people all the time when I’m onboard, I feel alone and so small and insignificant when I stand at the stern and look at the sunset.