That’s a wrap on 2/6 weeks at sea!

This week we spent the first half transiting to the northern most end of the Kermadec Trench and have been sampling here ever since. This means lots of downtime and lots of repeated operations. This week I added deploying the CTD in addition to A-Frame operations now working the hydroboom and working the communications line between the deck and the winch house. This includes ensuring safety of the deck, people, and the CTD. We watch the winch cable to ensure it doesn’t hit the side of the ship, bring up the CTD in a safe, controlled manner, rinse the CTD once onboard, and secure it safely in the bay for scientists to sample from the niskins.

Following the winch wire up the CTD keeping tension on it as the winch pulls it up to ensure no crossovers or gaps in the wire spool.

During the transit I learned how to make RJ-45 Ethernet cables which we’ll use on the switch boxes connected to the science servers. Electrical work and network management is just as important as deck operations in a marine tech’s role if not more important.

Because this has been a slower week, I wanted to highlight some non work related but very ship related content! Luckily, we have some of the best chefs in the fleet, and I want to showcase some of their offerings. Our chefs have been providing us with a great variety of meals, flavors, foods, and are accommodating to all dietary restrictions and preferences. Outside of meal times we have a plethora of leftovers, breads, cereals, ramen, snacks, cookies, candies, dried fruits, ice cream, sodas, seltzer water, juices, coffee, teas, milks, and coconut water available. Featured below is a standard breakfast for us and a particularly phenomenal dinner we had.

Breakfast: Cold Bar: Array of fresh fruit, greek, fruit, and dairy-free yogurt, granola, orange chia, and cream cheese, onions, and capers for bagels. Hot Bar: Steel Oats, Bagels, English Muffins, Hash Browns, Poached Eggs, Spam, Bacon, Prosciutto and Veggie Crepes
Dinner: Pictured: Watermelon Feta Mint Salad, Edamame, Passionfruit Panna Cotta with Pineapple Gel

To follow the trend from my previous post I’ll include some fun happenings this week. On a clear night we got to see the Milky Way streak across the sky. I finally saw my first green flash after over 120 days logged at sea! In the downtime I’ve had plenty of time to tend to my hobbies including crocheting.