June 17, 2018
2330 Local Time
Hello, and Happy Father’s Day (especially to mine!)
It has been an eventful and productive week at sea on the Sally Ride, including lots of sampling stations, some wave buoy deployments, mammal sightings, a petrel rescue and release, safety drills, and the retrieval of a small craft that capsized during a race from California to Hawaii – more on that below.
This is Day 8 of the CalCOFI “Summer” cruise (http://calcofi.org/), and we have sampled 40 of the 75 stations so far. I continue to stand the 0000-1200 watch as the Ride steams along our neat transect lines up the coast and am glad to be a part of such a good-spirited, skeleton crew haunting the labs and deck in the very early morning hours.
We made it through some pretty rough seas this past week. When leaving one station, we were broadsided by 3 big waves, which had the unfortunate effect of ripping out a table support and having a big deck crate jump its ratchet strap and slide across the deck. Thankfully, no one was injured, but it did require us to slow the ship to a crawl and re-secure both items with some creative ratchet straps and zip ties. Sea conditions can also make net deployment a tricky business, but I feel confident in my abilities to communicate with the winch operators and keep my eyes out for the cable angle, appropriate speed and depths, and line tension simultaneously.
(Image Credits: Jim Wilkinson, CalCOFI)
One quite memorable station was at a depth of 20 meters just offshore from Laguna Beach, California at 1,000 Step Beach. We were so close, that I could clearly see the writing on buildings and cars waiting at a traffic light. This is the closest station, by far, of the transect lines and everyone enjoyed the view and the momentary cell phone service it provided. I hope the people on shore also enjoyed the unique spectacle.
(Image Credits: Jim Wilkinson, CalCOFI)
It has also been a busy week for the three Marine Mammal Observers on board. They are out on deck from dawn to dusk deploying sonobuoys and the towed array for the Whale Acoustic Lab at Scripps (http://cetus.ucsd.edu/) as well as cataloguing visual species. They are a really fun group to talk to and so far, have had dolphin and whale sightings, mola mola sunfish, loads of albatross and petrels and this one, rather out of place, juvenile masked booby below.
(Image Credits: Jim Wilkinson (top), Katherine Whitaker (bottom left))
Today probably marked the strangest experience of all. Earlier in the week, the Captain was in communication with the US Coast Guard and the sailing vessel Precious Moment to arrange a possible transfer of Anne, an ocean row boat from team Attack Poverty that was competing in the 2018 Great Pacific Race. Around June 10th, Anne capsized and the two crew were rescued and taken back to shore on the HMM Hyundai Bangkok, a passing container vessel, for medical attention.
Present Moment met us on station in the late afternoon and sailed up off our starboard side. They threw over the towing line to our ship, and the Ride crew guided Anne over to the transom where they had rigged up a cargo net and bridle to act as a cradle. The entire boat was lifted on to deck and is now safely stowed and, presumably, will be returned once we dock again in San Diego.
This time next week we will be back in port and then I am off again almost immediately on a transit up to Newport, Oregon. I’ll chat with you then and wishing all a pleasent week!
– Emily