oooohhh bless

Yes we have extra space…please see the updated blog for day 11/12

*******

You know that sinking feeling when you have made a mistake? 06:00 yesterday I got that feeling big time. It came with the realization that perhaps my bravado in an earlier blog suggesting “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” was something that my body was not going to be able to cash. It came facing the mountain of samples I had yet to process as the last of my fellow biologists dusted their hands and said…”That is me, I’m off too bed”.

A chinstrap's distinctive porpoising (leaping) swimming style

But let us back up oh….8 or so hours. I’ve come on watch and the first thing to be done is to pick up from the last ROV watch. I know what’s coming I’ve been watching the TV relay into the main lab/sciences office. It looks like a blizzard in car headlights. The analogy is close enough. It is phytoplankton, the sea’s green plants, and other matter in the upper surface of the sea reflecting off our camera lights. This means Isis is in the upper water layers and by a process of deduction based on the direction of the blizzard across the screen, we are surfacing. Bummer! That means all the good stuff in the ROV van is over and we get paper work and tidy up. Swap out the last of the video tapes, take through all the paper logs for scanning and filing, remove all the cups the last watch left, snaffle the chocolate the last watch left…Every job has the admin. We drew the short straw.

There is an upside. We get samples. This is good. We have been waiting for these for a while. Second the timing could not be much better. The problem is that when samples come on board, you need to deal with them. If you are unlucky the ROV comes up right in the middle (or worse start) of your sleep. I’m lucky. I’ll work 20 minutes of my ROV shift and the remaining 5hr 40minutes I would normally spend in the ROV control room, I’ll spend doing my own (not communal) sampling.

Possibly my favorite photo yet. All natural light (by Helena)

Wrapping up the control van means I miss the social gathering that occurs on deck. It takes place just beyond the safety barriers while waiting for the ROV to be secured and powered down making it safe for a bunch of highly intelligent people with absolutely no common sense to come forward and stick their hands in all sorts of awkward places to pick up their exceedingly precious samples.

I include myself in the no common sense list. I’ve done my calculations and I know how many sample I would like of which species and from where. The chief scientist has done his very best to collect them for me…. I just didn’t ask the question “how long will this take to process”. The following half hour is an enlarged ant colony swarming over Isis and removing buckets, boxes, sensors and tools and then following a nice procession to the hanger where the path stops and none shall pass.

Standing behind an 2m table bolted to the floor is Katrin…our very organized German. Every cruise should have one. No sample may disappear into the bowels of the controlled temperature room or microbiology container without first going through Katrin. Buckets are sorted into trays and sub divided into prior agreed recipient lists. They are recorded in the big black log book and given a unique sample  number which they will keep until they reach maturity as a full fledged data point. We now know what the sample is and this will tally back to when and where it was collected. We will know where it will live after the cruise and who is the person responsible for nurturing the sample to maturity.

I’m duly allocated my trays. “Here are your 25 white anemones and 5 crabs of your own, You ave to share the tray of 15 viz Chong for is genetics”. Then its limpets, snails, sea spiders (they are not true spiders but a group called pycnogonids and yes we have a pycnophobe on board) and more of the same from different sites. I’m lucky its so cold (air temp 0.0oC) we can dispense with fridges and we can go into the controlled temperature room to warm up!

With an immense amount of blind optimism that comes from receiving samples that I have waited a long time for we start to chew through them. The processing line starts up. Take an example of the specialty of our study site Kiwa, a yeti crab. Leigh is up first and takes size and gender for population studies, Chong takes a muscle sample for genetics, Jane takes a belly scraping for analysis of the bacteria growing on the crabs chest hairs, then it comes to us in the food webs group. More muscle and bacterial scrapings for our feeding studies and finally it returns to Leigh who whips out the gonads to complete the population details with maturity. We can swap orders a bit.

One by one the chain shortens as people complete their tasks and head for bed. Finally the food web group are faced with a backlog of tissue collections to make. The final blow to my enthusiasm comes at 06:00 when Jenny, one of the 4am gym crowd braves the journey up into the hanger in her gym gear and back into the super structure before descending back down into the gym  (avoiding the water tight doors that make a huge racket when opening and closing) at the same time as the  the sole surviving microbiologist heads for bed.

It is times like this I fall back on some well tested tactics. No one to talk to, no one to listen to and more importantly no one to hear me. I down the now stone cold coffee I forgot about, crank up the MP3 to 11 and howl out the Rolling Stones (please swap music to taste). It is quite a sight, scalpel in one hand, sample vial in the other, warbling completely off key and blessedly drowned out by the engines of the vessel and the rattle of winches as the ROV goes about its business on the sea floor lining me up for another long night.

Chris

You know life would be very easy here if it was not for the outside world. Simple things become a bit more of a challenge at sea. Take writing this blog for example. Some genius has rotating office chairs in front of this computer. Now I’ve got to retrain myself from a life time habit of putting my feet on the chair foot rest, and instead keep them firmly on the floor otherwise I spin side to side, and usually the final resting place is 90 degrees off where I should be facing. It is excellent for developing core strength and a huge amount of fun but not really conducive to typing.  Then there are the daft things like apparently the school blog I’m using has a storage limit and I’ve run it out of space. So no photos here until I can get that resolved. But fear not for if it is not fixed soon I’ll blog under my own name and there will be plenty of photos then. As for trying to contact a service engineer for my freeze dryer pump….ohi. We have also lost access to the ice maps for the last 3 days. Are we still iced over at E9? Will we get there?  The suspense!

Caption Competition "Despite having no thumbs, sticking a flipper out seemed to work well enough to catch a lift on Isis" OR perhaps "Dogs head? mmm keep heading that way until you get to crab city, from there head 100m on a bearing of 035. That should bring you to Sepia. Pass it on your port side and you'll hit a fissure....follow it north to the end!"

So what is going on? Well the ROV is in for dive 189 (remember dive 187 was our first) which was supposed to be a 12 hour dive ….24hrs later the ROV is still down. The early tasks were quite simple. Find a specific site, take some biology and chemistry samples, move to a second site, conduct a video survey and then a do a bit more sampling before coming up. Unfortunately as is the way, the weather has turned a bit and it is a little too rough to lift the ROV out the water. So why didn’t we just lift before the weather got rough? It is a balancing act. It takes 2 hours to get to the ROV to the surface and then would take >4 hours to turn around and 2 hours to get back down assuming the weather was good enough…..OR the ROV is left down and quite safe down at 2500m (the ship however, when hit by some of the bigger waves is pushed 5-6m off its auto park position). Thankfully I was always blessed with being able to sleep like the dead because my cabin is just aft from the thrusters and when they kick in to keep the ship on station they are a little noisy.

The crew know this and have all sneaked off with cabins are at least 2 decks higher and thus further away from the thrusters. We have science cabins, then lab deck, then communal deck (galley, mess, library, video room, kitchen stores etc) then its officers/crew cabins for the next 2 decks. They feel the movement more… I’ll take the lesser of two evils.

And the wild life never seems bothered

But back to the ROV. We are blessed to have a legend in the deep sea world as our PSO (Principle Science Officer) Prof. Paul Tyler. This is his last cruise as PSO and I believe second last cruise ever. He will be back on board 3 weeks after we get off to do some vent work in the Cayman Trough with the Americans. The result of all this experience is a “what will be will be” attitude coupled with an every evolving plan A-Z and the ability to modify it by the minute to keep us working optimally. Simple things like weather and technical faults keep things challenging. Remember we are using bespoke equipment in some of the most hostile places on earth….even NASA have technical faults. Sometimes it can be both technical and weather. Dive 188 was delayed by 6hours because the overnight freezing temperatures split one of the ROV oil filled electronics cables. In went the CDT for water sampling and out when plan K.

Gratuitous gloating picture of our local wildlife. A humpback whale (by Alfred Aquilina)

So dive 189 is still going on. I’m not sure if we are on plan Q or if it should technically be plan A versions 12.3. We cannot surface yet although the weather is getting better. We cannot sample as all our storage boxes have samples in already. So we are conducting a lot of video survey. The silver lining in the cloud is Leigh’s, one of the PhD students on the cruise who is doing some classic ecology looking at animal zonation patterns as they move away from the vent orifice. Environmental conditions like temperature and acidity and access to the chemical soup pumping out of vents generally decreases with increasing distance from the vent. This changes the animals present through a result of environmental preferences of the animals and or of the microbes on which they rely.  She has created some of the most amazing images of the whole consortium…life size 15m vent pictures from hundreds of individual video frame grabs.

Enough for now.

In the mean time some additional reading . You’ll have notice that the picturing the deep blog has been inactive. Well the powers that be finally got sorted and this link should now be replaced with http://hotventscoldocean.blogspot.co.uk. This blog is different again and contains a full list of the scientists on board and our specialties as we other another perspective on the work. Also please don’t forget Clare’s with her video links https://elgg.leeds.ac.uk/geocwo/weblog

Goodbye for now

Chris

Aaarrrghhh so much going on! Work, eat, sleep and blog…there is only time for three. I can sleep when I’m dead!

Well it is good news. The ROV has been in done its shake down dive, collected what we suspect is not just a new species or even a new family but … possibly a new order of anemone, seen active vents and come back safe. What a day. You could see the weight evaporate off shoulders and the nervous grimaces turn back towards genuine smiles. Bring it on!

Isis launch (by Chong Chen)

The first dive was a relatively short 12hrs. The ROV itself is not massively limited by time. The moving of arms and parts etc degrades oil and eventually it needs to come up for a service but that could be after 48+ hours. The problems is we have usually filled all our cargo boxes by then.

So we are doing a series of short bounce dives. Dive 187 (our first) confirmed the site as still active, oriented us in space and even gave tantalizing hints that things have changed. For example we are working on a vent chimney called Dogs Head (only looked even remotely like a dogs head 2 years ago when viewed from a specific angle and altitude). Its size and shape appear to have changed and many of the animals have gone. Questions like why and where spring to mind.

Dive 188 was a swath mapping dive where we scan the seabed. It is perhaps the most riveting of ROV watches. The ROV is set to auto altitude 40 above the seabed (so you see nothing) and it does a systematic mowing the lawn coverage of an area. Science log reads

00:23 start line 1 northward,

01:14 end of line 1

01:27 start line 2 southward

02:23 change pilot camera tape

It’s a job that requires our mapping scientist (Verla) and 1 member of the watch. Sampling (now that is where the fun is) requires a team of 4-5 scientists and if there was one piece of advice it is know when to say “STOP. Everyone take a breath….” as things can happen too fast. What is the point of receiving a sample and not knowing where it came from because it was not logged or missing a tape change because everyone had headless chicken syndrome. I think a major part of the problem is we do this because we love it and everyone regresses to childhood with new toys/games if you are not careful. Yes the excitement can get the better of us. Although we strive to find our academic detached analytical self we will probably find him up the tree house having a picnic with joy of discovery and her little brother adventure.

I have to stop now. 45 minutes until the team takes over control the Dive and I have to spend some time in cahoots with the previous watch doing a hand over.

Chris

Pictures speak louder than words

Chinstrap penguin Pygoscelis antarctica (by Jenny Thompson)

King Penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus (by Belinda Alker)

Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris (by Chong Chen)

Snow petrel Pagodroma nivea (by Chong Chen)

Today's sunrise over E2, the first clear morning we have had (by Jenny Thompson)

“Are we nearly there yet?” “Not yet”

“Are we nearly there yet?” “Just a wee bit longer”

“Are we nearly there yet?” “Please stop asking”

“Are we nearly there yet?” “Yes we’re here”

But where exactly? That is a little harder to tell. We have arrived at a dot on an electronic map, but otherwise there is no outwardly visible feature to mark the end of our 8 day epic …the horizon looks the same in every direction and that is not just because it is black out there at night. Strangely, although we have arrived it is still 2½ km to our destination, just instead for heading N, S, E or W we need to look down.  Time to park up and travel the rest of the way remotely.

So here we are parked…yes you can park a ship in the middle of the ocean. It is called dynamic positioning and broadly speaking it is an auto park function for the ship that will use global positioning satellites (that form the basis of your car sat nav systems) and the ships thrusters to hold the vessel on a point within a few metres.  The thrusters are strong enough to move the ship 6knots sideways, which is very fast going considering our journey here was only at 12knots during the day and 6knots at night (high speeds, low visibility and iceberg ridden seas don’t mix).

We are now going to spend the next 4/5 days or so on station. I would be surprised if we move more than a 1km unless we go scouting around for new sites. Surprisingly sitting on station makes very little difference to life….the boat still rocks, the horizon is still “water water everywhere” and there is no sensation of being still. Weather will still make you walk in curves and S shapes down the corridor, crash into door frames as they reposition around you and generally make climbing stairs an entertaining experience where your knees buckle as the vessel rises to met you or make you feel all floaty as it drops away.

But we are here and the first task to see if the journey is worthwhile. The reason is that hydrothermal vents form when sea water percolates into the earth’s crust. In areas like where we are, magma is not that far from the surface. Magma at close to 1200oC heats the seawater in the crust and a combination of the heat and the extreme pressure experienced at this depth does some really funny things to it. It becomes a super critical fluid. It is neither liquid nor gas but something in between. Without these special conditions of temperature and pressure it cannot exist. This creates a comic book hero of our humble water imbuing it with special powers including for example the ability to dissolve metals.

Still bound by the rules of physics this super hot water >400oC rises buoyant towards the surface stripping chemicals out of the seabed as it goes. As this water exits the sea floor it is now carrying a load of metals and other minerals and chemical compounds and is still around 400oC and more acidic than vinegar. The hot water hits the cold and suddenly its ability to hold all these chemicals in solution is reduced. Cold is the vent fluids kryptonite. These chemicals precipitate (form into particles) out of the water building mineral chimneys around the edges and smoke plumes out the top.

Black smoke pouring out of a mineral chimney. The classic vent

[You can do a similar experiment yourself. Heat a glass of water add salt until it just stops dissolving. As the water cools you will see more and more salt in the glass as its ability to hold the salt in solution is reduced with its temperature…it won’t build chimneys though so don’t expect too much]

The problem is that the magmatic activity that generates the heat and gives the water it’s super powers is transient. Pathways to the surface block or change and the heating waxes and wanes. Thus vent sites have a life span and it is usually in the regional of a few decades. Our previous research suggests that the E2 vent side is dying. First task at this station is to drop the CTD over the side as see whether we still observe the smoke plume.

Deploying the CTD to sniff out vent plumes.

Sensor readouts...all the wiggly lines show how the chemical characteristics of the water change with depthProfile of the Starboard rail and the CTD headed to sniff out our vent plume. Is the site still active?

So was the journey worthwhile? You’ll know when I do. Not to worry much because as one vent site dies, another generally appears…we just have to find it.

Snow! In the middle of summer?

First blood to the chemists! Late this afternoon the rather uncharismatically named CTD took a trip to 3000m. Pressure at this depth is phenomenal, squeezing any air into a space about 1/300^th of that it would occupy on the surface. Take a good football down to that depth and it would look flat. There would not be enough air in it to fill a ping-pong ball yet none of the air escaped.

The CTD derives its name from the information it gathers. In days of old the core readings taken by the CTD were Conductivity[salinity], Temperature and Depth[pressure]), today’s kit does so much more. The top section of the equipment houses a rack of 24 water sampling bottles (niskin bottles). They are open tubes with spring loaded ends. Water just flows through the tubes as the CTD sinks until we “fire” the bottles at the target depth. The ends then close capturing a sample of water from a very specific depth. We can fire any number of the bottles at a time. Today it was 4 bottles at each of 6 different depths

Alfred taking a water sample

24 grey bottles handing on the CDT... and if one grey bottle should accidentally fall ....

The bottom section of the CTD houses the instruments. They can be seen more clearly in the third photo below where the bottles were removed for a second dip. In addition to C,T and D we also have a light scattering sensor that measures the number of particles in the water and an Eh metre. The whole package gives quite a detailed picture of the character of the water.

Guiding the rather naked looking CTD over the side without its bottles

Water has a chemical finger print based on temperature salinity and so on. Generally speaking warm and fresh waters float on top of cold and salt water creating different water layers (different combinations of these are more challenging). These layers can flow in different directions and have come from different places. Understanding the structure of the water column is important for example in knowing how heat from the sun is distributed around the earth creating a more uniformly heated planet than would otherwise occur.

However, that is not why we are here. We are searching for hydrothermal vents and they spew out masses of super-hot water with lots of chemicals in it [more on these in the future]. The effect is like smoke from a chimney rising into the sea and floating off on an aquatic breeze. Soon we will go searching for that smoke plume. But first we need to know what is a normal background water finger print for the area before we can trace the abnormal to its source. That was today’s task…completed successfully. As the sun began to set the chemists retreated to their labs, like little children with presents at Christmas, to start analyzing gasses, several nutrients and metals.

Putting up a brave front in the face of all this chemistry was a lone microbiologist, Anni, who is collecting and then filtering water to analyses what bacteria are growing in the water. Watch this space as microbes are the key to the fantastic life to be found at hydrothermal vents.

Anni filtering water for bacteria...hubble bubble ...

Chris

George the chief engineer and fellow Scot with the author expressing sympathy that while I enjoy the crisp outdoors (air temp -0.3, sea temp +1.2) he can toast himself in the engine room.

The tension mounts. We have plans and time tables. In less than 12 hours the first samples will be coming over the side. Admittedly they are “background water”, water taken well clear of any influence of the hydrothermal vents we are slowly steaming towards. Not that that matters. The kit is going in and samples should come back.

But that is in the future.

What I want to do today is turn my hand to becoming a food critic. Not sure where I’m going? Read on!. Life aboard ship can be a bit odd and with the right group, a real community spirit develops. After all as the saying goes “we are all in the same boat together”. So we have a good crack and the banter flows. The problem is it usually flows at me. Fine I’ll take give as good as I get. However, I was faced yesterday with a comment I had no comeback too!  “All your write about is food” Ok they exaggerate a bit surely

Day 1 cooked breakfast, cooked lunch, chocolate, coffee and cocktails

Day 2 Steak and Curry

Day 3 Excuses for over eating

Day 4/5 Breakfast for tea and the need for exercise

So perhaps they do not exaggerate. However until the science really kicks off in less than 12 hours I’ll use this blog space to put to rest the minds of all those family. The mums, dads, husbands, wives and partners of all forms. They look after us here on the boat! They even keep track that you are turning up for dinner. Not eating is the first sign of something being wrong with a person…as the safety brief on day 1 hammers home.

So who do we blame / praise (delete as appropriate at end of cruise depending on weight gain)? John and Wally our chefs along with Graham and Stephanie the stewards (who managed to miss the photo opportunity) are who. Molly the ships doc has even chipped in in the kitchen…must have been a good health day. I hope to introduce you to more of the characters aboard as we go ….but given our theme its best to start here.

John and Wally, the guys responsible for the preservation of our taste buds

And for your gastronomic delight! Menu for the 6^th Dec. An example of only one form many. The challenge it keeping it going right the way through the cruise. There are usually bets as to when the fresh fruit becomes a choice of bruised apple or a nectarine that escaped from the box. But until then enjoy…

BREAKFAST @ 07:20

Fruit Juices

 Fresh Fruit (mango, kiwi, watermelon, strawberries, cherries, grapes and apples today)

Selection of Cereals (I’ve not touched yet)

Porridge

Cooked Breakfast (sausage, bacon, hash brown, black pudding, tomatoes and eggs today)

Tea, Coffee Toast and Preserves

******

LUNCH @ 11:30 (or not in my case)

Home made pumpkin and onion soup (Delish, I had it for my 03:00 snack)

Salmon fish cakes with dill sauce

Baked jacket potato

Mange-tout

Assorted cold cuts and salad (a wide range…my 00:01 snack)

Ice cream

Fresh baked rolls and assorted cheese and biscuits (my 09:00 snack)

Fresh Fruit

******

DINNER @ 17:30

Home made pumpkin and onion soup

Deep fried scampi with tartar sauce

Beef Casserole with suet dumplings

Creamed potatoes, buttered cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower florets

Assorted cold cuts and salad

Fresh strawberry cheesecake (urm…a second 00:01 snack)

Selection of Ice cream and wafers

Fresh baked rolls and assorted cheese and biscuits

Fresh Fruit

Is that the treadmill calling?

Chris

First of all a hang over from the last blog entry on orange onesies. In case you wanted a laugh over your coffee here is a video I volunteered to take of Clare putting on the survival suit. Holding the camera opted me out of making a fool of myself. One size truly does fit all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMnjzLyTBIU&feature=youtu.be

So I’m slowly equilibrating myself to the night watch. As watch leader I’ll ultimately have responsibility of making sure the work is done to schedule (crushing responsibility at £2000 an hour cruise and ROV time (ROV = remotely operated vehicle…pronounced as a word to those in the know rather than a series of letters…get used to the acronym it will appear a lot in the future))…but until work really begins the 22:00-04:00 watch is a lonely place, four stalwart scientists wondering empty halls (hence the Marie Celeste),  thermo mugs in hand trying to convince the mind that it can be productive at ridiculous o’clock. Sporadic entertainment is to be had when the ship crew change watch at midnight but that doesn’t last long. Broadly speaking we’ve attempted to make Dolly Parton turn in her as yet undug grave as we “sleep 9 to 5….what a way to make a living”, except this is a ship so its 09:00 to 17:00 which makes the rhyming even worse.

What is the point of a port hole cabin when you have to dog it (put the metal flap down and bolt it) to stop the light?

But I digress. So it is breakfast for tea, tea for breakfast and microwave reheated lunch. You think that is confusing try having a conversation about what happened yesterday. Time is apparently relative, only it’s relative to when you slept and someone’s yesterday is usually the night watch’s today. Does that mean they are from the future? Really shouldn’t write blogs this early …I witter (now I know where my son gets it from).

Another few random events…ice update…southern sites still covered but clearing slowly so there is hope!

Currently wishing we had an ice breaker...where is global warming when you need it. Warning positions and routes for illustration purposes. Not to be used for navigation.

For once, the first thing to go over the side was not someone’s lunch (weather has been good) but 3km of ROV umbilical cable. Add one weight, deposit over the end and stream behind the vessel. The purpose is to take any twists out of the cable that develop through use. Too many twists break the important wires inside the cable.

Also a few life patterns are developing. Most of the night watch heads to the gym at 04:00 for an hour or so. Part a drive to keep the metabolism going until after breakfast (our Tea) part effort to fight the potential 7 courses of food in a day when the furthest you can move is a little less than 100m.

Finally I just want to round up with an apology to friends and family. This time the web addresses will be correct! For everyone reading this if you fancy another perspective may I direct you to other bloggers on the cruise.

https://elgg.leeds.ac.uk/geocwo/weblog/

http://picturingthe deep.blogspot.co.uk/

Oh and if you have questions or photo requests you can post them here too or e-mail me!

Chris

Today has been very much a regular day at the office. Granted the office is rather unusual. The first detailed plans are out and its regular work (paper writing, grant proposals and tea drinking) until the 08:00 on the 5^th when we test the remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Until then we just keep steaming.  But that is the future. Today at the office was punctuated by compulsory safety drills. Muster stations, life boat drill and putting on an immersion suit. Given that the seawater in which we are currently sailing is a balmy 6 degrees Celsius thermal protection in an emergency is a must. It is all the more important given that in the next 2 days we cross a water boundary and hit the Antarctic water sitting at close to 0 degrees Celsius.

Molly, Leigh and Katrin (50% of the scientists are female and we have lassies amongst the officers, engineers and crew), wrapped up warmly and huddling in the enclosed lifeboat avidly listening to how even hardened sea goers will throw up in one of these. I also learned we are human ballast and our body weight low in the boat is part of the life boat’s self-righting mechanism in the event of capsize. I now have an excuse to over eat!

Thermal protection comes in the form of a bright orange onesie which is accessorized with fetching reflective strips, rubber gloves and mittens. It is one size fits all and tops even my inadequate sense of fashion. Take a look

Oh yes! Fantastic Jeff

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

Just a short one for today as not too much has happened. We are officially in the waiting place. The first leg of our journey is a relatively short one up the coast to take on fuel (called bunkering after the days of filling your coal bunkers). The vessel’s fuel tank is not exactly small. We bunkered about 300 tonnes of fuel and that wasn’t to the top. Now that we are officially at sea, meal times have changed to better accommodate the watches. Breakfast and lunch start earlier and run longer. Dinner starts later and was a huge hunk of steak (had curry last night). Most of the day has been spend at a loose end. I’m

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Jobs are all done, we held the initial science meetings for early planning, and the novelty of boat life prevented any serious attempt at work, although I get my computer integrated into the ships systems. Running off a satellite communications link we have what is effectively one broadband connection to cater for all 54 souls on board. While I write this blog on my laptop at my cabin desk I’ll need to transfer the file to one of only three unrestricted internet linked computers. I can only read my e-mail, keep abreast of weather and explore the NHS or order machine parts from my desk access rights…but that’s it. No social media for me and you can forget skype.

"Fill her up?"

Bunkering was completed early afternoon but we waited for the tide to turn before departure as we are heading through a narrows in the Strait. We are not waiting for water depth but for the current. We can either choose to burn fuel and fight it or wait a bit and ride with the current after the tide turns. The captain chose the latter so we finally leave the waiting place at 17:30 and as I write this at just shy of midnight we are shooting out of the Straits of Magellan and being propelled into the South Atlantic with a boost of 2-3 knots for the current.

The first part of my surprise advent / Christmas survival presents from my family. Yes officer I packed my bags myself and no one has asked me to carry anything…