Best part of the day: Captain calling us "Bastards"!

Scene: 4 young scientists hanging out on the helideck (just below the bridge, where the Captain manages ship operations) enjoying the sunset, having a couple of beers, and taking pictures. Suddenly the window of the bridge flies open with the Captain hanging out above us.

Captain: "You Bastards!"

(at which point we are worried: is it because we are on the helideck? is is because we have open bottles?), but no:

Captain: "I was just reporting lightning strikes!!!"

(due to the flashes on our cameras!)

Our captain is actually about the most chill guy you could imagine running a ship of ~20 crew and ~20 scientists, which is what made being called bastards even better, as he meant bastards in only the most enduring manner!

Internet is very slow, may lose it soon, when we lose it, will probably be for a week, no internet last night, so here is from yesterday:

21Aug2010

Stuffed veal at 4:30 in the morning....ummm....ok! so yeah, sampling from 11:00pm - 4:00am, awesome sunset tonight, was going to sleep after dinner in prep for sampling all night, but ended up not sleeping, and if I would have, would have missed the sunset, so is being a little more tired worth watching an awesome sunset over the Pacific horizon? I say yes!

Got our samples acidified today, why is it that I always seem to be playing with acid when we are steaming through choppy waters, anyway, keeps it interesting

ooooooh! So I guess it is Sunday (my ipod tells me this, I would have no idea what day it is....), but Sunday means special dinner! (although they may have a hard time topping the sable fish and stuffed veal tonight!)

no internet last night. so from yesterday:

Zodiac ride!!!! absolutely ridiculous! crashing through the swell on the Zodiac Hurricane (basically a 300hp twin engine inflatable boat!) at 16 kts (the Tully does 10-12!) (but the hurricane can do 45 kts!?!? WHAT?!?!?). We went cruising out for some surface trace metal samples, Keith hanging off the side to sample (not when we were doing 16 kts!), anyway, it was an amazing experience, seeing the Tully from the water, and just out zipping around the Pacific!

Poor Amy had to watch our samples filter for something like 4 hours, but was dancing around in the clean bubble enjoying it, will hopefully get 2 set ups going next time so be done in half the time. I watched some stuff filter too, but only for about 1 hour.

Oh yeah, 2nd best part of the day (only cause, come on, whats gonna beat out a Zodiac ride!), we had banana splits at dinner! it was so ridiculous, everyone was laughing and giggling like a bunch of kids in a candy (errrr....ice cream) store, seriously when is the last time you had a banana split, now imagine having them handed out to a bunch of half sleep deprived scientists floating around out in the middle of the ocean, *hilarity ensues*

who the hell is vacuuming at 4:30 in the morning?!?! Ok, so it is not a vacuum, but it sure sounds like it, probably the thrusters. or why I am up at 4:30am? (just finished sampling), or why did I just eat a Montreal smoked meat sandwich at 4:30am? (being outside on a ship somehow makes you hungry), or Am I going to wake up at 7:00am to eat breakfast (yes!), Am I going to go back to sleep after breakfast (probably), Should I work out in the morning (yes), will I work out (we'll see.....)

anyway, enough of this random babble, just finished our first trace metal sampling, pumping at 5, 10, 25, and 40m, all went well, Keith Johnson (from IOS, running the trace metal show here) is great to work with, we started a half hour late and still finished a half hour early, so thats good.

Its crazy the sense of scale often in oceanography. The maximum depth we pumped at was 40m (~120ft), which would often be considered exceedingly shallow in terms of oceanographic sampling, and yet that is like a 10-12 story building. As we prepared to pull up 15m of pump tubing between 40 and 25m, I thought, 15m, yeah, thats nothing, but it turns out pulling up 45ft of tubing up out of the ocean definately took longer than I expected.

anyway, better go to bed before breakfast

oh, yeah, it was a perfectly clear night, went out on the aft deck to just enjoy the stars (sooooo many stars without the influence of city lights), and saw 3 shooting stars!

alright, back out to sea! Headed out today after refueling, at one point toward the end of refueling I heard that we had taken on 62,000 L (~15,000 gallons) of fuel, to which somebody scoffed: "yeah, thats nothing!". I looked up later online, and sure enough, the capacity is 483,000L (~120,000 gallons)! and you thought you spent a lot on gas! Even crazier, is the largest Canadian ice breaker, the Louis S. St-Laurent, has a capacity of 4.8 million L (~1.2 million gallons!), my labmate Jeff was on this ship in the Arctic last year, it can be self sustaining for up to 6 months! (that is a lot of fuel, food, etc)!

There were gale warnings headed through the Juan de Fuca Strait, headed out from the protected waters of the Georgia Strait behind Vancouver Island going out to the "open" Pacific, so far ship is not moving too much, but we'll see.....

It was pretty neat earlier, heading down into the Juan de Fuca we had Victoria on one side, and Port Angeles on the other, so we could look one way to the US and the other way to Canada.

We have a great bunch of people here on the ship, really looking forward to the next couple of weeks!

pretty great when the ship's fire alarm is going off because you are having a BBQ out on the deck! another day of clear skys and calm seas, we'll see what happens for the next couple of weeks. tried to fish for tuna, but apparently water is too cold, but some are hopeful for Line P. a little rock band with the crew after the bbq, all in good spirits, they are off the ship tomorrow after 28 days on, but now they get 28 days off! not a bad life.

good day today, caught up on a little sleep, read for a while up on monkey's island while porpoise played out along the starboard side, not bad!

sounds like we will be getting back to port a day early tomorrow! apparently there is a heat wave back on land, but has been great last couple of days here!

Afer a long day (4 stations in ~11 hours!, not including one that I guess also was technically "today", which we finished up around 2:30am), had an awesome sunset, enjoyed while eating a sandwich on the helideck, we were on station, and as the ship kept turning a slow circle, the view of the sunset and horizon just kept roating, awesome! makes long hours seem worth it

Trace metal rosettes are done! packing up tomorrow before the ship's BBQ!

amazing how the weather and sea state have changed, couple days ago the fog horn sounded continuously, then large swell prevented deployments, now today the sky was brillantly clear and the sea quite calm, hoping for more of the same tomorrow for BBQ!