It has been slow and steady progress getting the R/V Atlantis ready after she’s been on ‘vacation’ for a better part of the year. Old furniture either being thrown out or reused, new furniture being placed or fitted, totes being emptied then filled again with more stuff that happens to get dumped there by another person also in a hurry to finish a task, just absolute chaos. However, through the sweat and frustrations we are finally seeing big leaps in progress around the ship. It finally feels like all the labor we’ve been putting in for nearly a month straight is finally coming together for some seblance of order! I just wish I had taken some before and after pictures of the entire floor we have been focusing on.

The highlight of this week for me was not the fruits of our labor paying off at a visual observation, but some pretty spectacular inginuity and environmental manipulation. I finally had the chance to go through the Panama Canal (something I learned of as a child from ‘Animaniacs’, guess my age), observing and learning about how the canal actually functions. Pretty exciting stuff, tried to stay up for the majority of it but quickly ran out of steam around 1am. We began going through roughly 8:30pm and from what I was told we didnt finish getting through until 2:30am. Needless to say, the entire crew was pretty wiped from either staying up to watch/having to deal with the canal workers that had to come on board to handle the line.

Right now, we are close to Cuba and it’s gorgeously blue over here. Sea turtles have been spotted a couple of times, just need to be out there at the right time with my camera out!

Bella Dina Lax and I working on putting together one of the many benches around the labs (Thanks for the great shot Grace Fulton!)

Before getting to the canal, I was outside watching the city get closer and a HUGE pod of dolphins came to play. I’m talking like a pod of 50 at least. Quite a magical moment, you can hear these guys when they’re around. I didn’t know they were so loud with their prolific squeals and clicks!

Outside Panama Canal waiting for our turn in the que.

Starting to go through the canal, what you don’t see is all the fun and noisy blackbirds, tons of bats, and a croco-gator (couldn’t tell) off to the right.