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!

ok, so have slept about an hour in the last day, so why am I writing this....? someone better be reading..... :)

saw some awesome birds around the ship, little white ones darting around in the ships lights last night (this morning?!?), and albatros follow us thinking we are a fishing boat, then leave when they figure out we aren't dumping them any fish, although the other night the waters were full of krill, and getting sucked up into the incubators, incubators were cleaned out and the krill dumped out the back of the ship, but no birds around at that time. Probably the coolest birds are these small black, yellow, and green birds with black slits for eyes, wicked, and wicked!

boat is rocking pretty good, apparently the largest swell they have had out here on the cruise, don't mind it much, except when trying to acidify samples!

Tues

In the fog. So fog horns every minute, like seriously every minute (by law).

Saw the craziest thing today, well OK, maybe not the craziest, but surprising: A hummingbird, out at sea(!), zipping around the ship. Also watched some albatros for a while, amazing to watch them fold up their large wings, they must fold in like three or four places, and suddenly these huge wings are tucked up onto their back.

The sea was really awesome for a while today, appearing calm (nearly full reflection, like a lake), and yet undulating with a long slow swell; hypontic to watch. Watching the fog roll in was also interesting, as the sun set, it completely altered the look of that water, making the ocean appear almost as puffy clouds, but the color of pea soup. (hmmm....depending on who is reading this, I just spelled "color" wrong....)

Microprofiler crew is doing casts until 3:00am, then we steam for 12 hours, we may be sampling late tomorrow (Wed) night / early Thurs morning, we'll see, but enjoying time now to read a little bit!

09Aug2010

SUN!!! Apparently they have not had much of this over the last couple of weeks. Was hanging out up on Monkey's Island (near the top of the ship) to enjoy the sun. Saw a couple of whales and porpoises playing in the wake around the ship.

The expanse of the ocean all around you is humbling, both makes you think you are so small, but also really builds a sense of community on the ship, you realize that the people and supplies on the ship is really all you have out here. Hard to imagine going out blindly into the ocean as early explorers did, we have satellite, internet, phone, helipad, so many safety measures in place, they were just heading out in a wooden ship with sails, a compass, and a map that was probably incorrect. Crazy!

Anyway, first trace metal sampling went smoothly, they really have a great system in place for sampling, lables, etc, makes it real easy.

Awesome shicken salad croissant lunch and chickpea stew dinner

One station tomorrow, then 12 hours of steaming

internet is available only sporadically and is slow, so here are some posts from the last couple of days

08Aug2010

Swaying of the ship is like being rocked to sleep…..which I will probably be doing soon, as we have a station at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Ship life here seems great, everyone is very welcoming and everyone seems to just go about doing their job and then, more importantly, you actually see people NOT working (ie. people have regular schedules and have time off!).

Had a great day travelling across the island and spending the evening in Ucluelet with Chris and Kevin from Uvic, they are down a man and so have been helping them out some today with their microprofiler (looks like an underwater palmtree!, not sure if I will be able to upload pics, may have to wait for land). Will start our sampling tomorrow. Elena, Christina, and Ian did quite a transformation on our trace metal sampling container, plastic sheeting makes it look like a real clean lab!

Chicken Kiev lunch and steak dinner, not bad! and somehow three (?!?!?) deserts, mocha pie, lemon bar, and baked apple with butterscotch vanilla ice cream (and ahhh, oh yeah, like three cookies….)

Looking forward to a good sleep and an early morning!

Ok, so not on ship yet, but in Ucluelet! Rolling in the sweet UVic late 80s/early 90s Chevy Astro minivan with dark blue pseudo-shag carpeting going up the doors! Hope to be on ship tomorrow, but it has been involved in search and rescue operations for a couple of days, so we are still technically on standby.

Beautiful drive across the island and a 'shady' (no, actually AWESOME) lunch at the Shady Rest restaurant/pub/liquor store in Qualicum. Now going to go explore Ucluelet!

(From ~10:30am):

A little rain on the ferry, but good to see people still out enjoying the view, I will go join them shortly (should probably keep laptop inside and dry). So my security came through Ottawa and am now heading from Vancouver to Uculet over on the west side of the Island to meet up with the Tully for the last third of the Ianson Cruise, then stay on for the Line P cruise, returning Sep 3. Just leaving Horseshoe Bay now in transit to Departure Bay in Nanaimo, guys from UVic are going to pick me up and then we are headed across the Island to Uculet, stopping in Port Alberni for lunch.

Clouds are just handing over the coast, pretty awesome view (Come on you people all around me: stop eating your $12 eggs and toast, look up from your newspaper and enjoy this view! Ok yeah, so I am on a laptop, but have been staring off for like five minutes between each sentence).

Anyway, in terms of the work, we should have two transects left on the cruise from which we are performing trace metal sampling, one transect along the Juan de Fuca and one off the coast of Washington. Other groups will be making stops for microprofiling work and deploying and recovering a couple of floats.

So apparently there is not wireless internet on this ferry (not that there is anything wrong with this, wow, we have become so spoiled….), so anyway, will try to actually get this up soon

Next post from ship!?!?