Hi all,

This past week aboard the Armstrong was spent in port while we prepped for our next cruise and did some routine maintenance.

Monday, I reviewed instrument instruction sheets for the instruments that we will be primarily using during the Labor Day Weekend cruise. We’re doing a whole bunch of CTDs, but during transits between stations the science party is planning on using acoustic instruments, like the ADCP, EK80, Knudsen depth sounder, or the multibeam.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of doing routine maintenance on the -80°C freezer in the main lab where while cleaning it out the inside I accumulated a bucket full of snow.  My other focus that day was completing the data disc (which I did!). Joe and I notified the chief scientist from AR21, so that he knew the disc was ready.

Wednesday morning, the R/V Atlantis departed WHOI to chase storms in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a unique experience to see the boat off because typically I’m the one who is on the boat sailing away.

The R/V Atlantis departing WHOI. Photo credit, me.

Since the data disc was finished, I started the new cruise process by running a newcruise command in our servers which mounts all of our instruments to the server and makes sure that data for this next cruise is collected in the appropriate locations on our servers. I set up the science Elog for the new cruise and Joe and I completed and sent in our SSSG cruise report from AR21.

Science started loading their equipment aboard for this weekend’s cruise on Thursday. This proved to be a busy day for me. I created packets of the updated instrument instruction sheets for the science party to reference throughout the cruise. The end of the day was hectic because I was the primary contact for the science party so I was running around making sure they had everything they needed, etc. This short cruise is going to force me to learn at a wicked fast pace.

And lastly, today is full of final cruise prep. I started off Monday with a to-do list that was barely half a page long however, now it is spilling over a page, so my goal is to have everything checked off today (its about 95% checked off already).

Stay tuned on Monday for a post about the Labor Weekend Cruise which departs early tomorrow.

 

~Lauren