We’ve passed our 4 week mark on our cruise aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth. We’ve been steadily making our way north and its becoming apparent. The days have become much longer as well as colder. We’ve had a steady stream of fog that comes in most days for several hours at a time. We are almost done with our current station and have been working at a steady pace for the last several days.
Recently I’ve been learning how to operate the winch during deployment and recovery of the mutli-core instrumentation. This is certainly been one of the more challenging technical skills I’ve had to learn while aboard. Both deploying and recovering instrumentation takes quite a bit of coordinated effort between several different people. While I am in the winch booth operating via a remote joystick, there are two people running tag lines, someone operating the A-frame and a deck leader managing everyones actions. It is quite an intricate dance and one where safety is paramount. It can be an anxiety inducing build up but is done within a moment and comes with elation when everything works well.
Tomorrow we will begin setting our sights even further North, riding along the Eastern coast of Greenland. I will be keeping my eyes out for any auroa borealis though seeing the occasional pod of whales has been a good consolation prize if not.
