Well, we’re finally here. After a month in the shipyard getting disassembled and reassembled almost daily, the ship is ready to get back out to sea. The whole crew has been working hard to get everything cleaned up and ready to go for this shakedown cruise. The deck department repainted the deck this week, the engineers refueled the ship yesterday, and the marine techs got all of our onboard sensors up and running again. All the different observers and technicians coming on the cruise came onboard today, so we’re finally ready to leave port. That should happen tommorow morning, after a few last minute things that still need to happen.
I’ve spent the last week with the marine techs finishing up preparations for the cruise. We’re going to be using this trip to recalibrate all of our sensors, as well as test and commission the new ones we put in this winter. It will take us about 8 days to sail from Portland to Newport. We have to sail offshore about 200 miles to several deep spots to get the depth needed to calibrate our sensors. After we’ve made sure that everything is up to snuff, the ship will dock in Newport and start going on science cruises for the year.
Since we were able to finish up all of our shipyard projects really fast this year, I spent a lot of ime this week working on a project that I got before coming onboard. As I said in my first blog, I study naval architecture and marine engineering, so during my time here, I’ve spent a lot of time studying all the different machinery systems and the design of the vessel. I’ve had to draw a lot of different schematics and plans for the ship, and it’s helped me learn about the ship so much faster than I otherwise would have. Even though Sikiuliaq is a relatively small ship, it’s built to handle a really harsh life, so every system onboard is much more complicated than I thought it would be. Even though having to trace all the different systems and hunt down all the information I could about the ship was really difficult, having an insight into how everything runs and fits together was really cool as I went about my duties every day.
To end on another happy note, another effect of finishing all our work early was that my mom got to come up to Portland on monday. I got to show her all around the ship and everything I’ve been working on, which was cool, especially since she’s never been on board before. I’m glad I was able to hang around the city with her for a while before we set out to sea. Here’s a picture of mom being really excited to come onboard.
I will post my last blog after we get in to port next week. I’ve heard that the weather will make this trip almost as memorable as our last one.. See you all then.