GO SHIP I09N Blog: Week 2
Hear what Kendra has been up to this week aboard the R/V Thompson
WEEK 2: Beginning Sampling Stations and Troubled Waters
March 22-29
Hello blog viewers! It is now officially the end of our first week at sea. I have been loving life on the boat, but honestly, this week has felt longer due to several problems we have encountered… which I will elaborate on further below.
The first 2 days on the water were spent in transit to our first sampling station. Lots of time was spent playing games, reading, and getting used to the waves. Surprisingly, I haven’t gotten seasick yet. I guess I was accustomed to the action on UCSB’s smaller research crafts– I’ll take the win!
Once we got to our first sampling test station things moved pretty quickly. The 36-niskin CTD rosette was deployed by our wonderful Thompson crew, who were all so welcoming to the science party and quickly made the ship feel like home.
Once the rosette entered the water, we encountered our first issue. The winch software wasn’t working, the cable tangled, and we were unable to fire any bottles to collect water. We were on a tight schedule, so we kept moving onto the next possible test station. By our next stop, the marine and CTD techs worked out the software issue and were able to successfully sample!
We must’ve let our guards down, because the aft winch (which is used to deploy the CTD package into the water) failed at the following station. We were unable to see any communication from the CTD to the winch display. The techs re-terminated the cable several times, but we ended up having to switch to the forward winch. Everything was smooth sailing from there…
NOT. We now realized we were headed straight towards a newly forming tropical cyclone. We had to hunker down for 2 days and wait out cyclone Courtney, which was predicted to grow to category 2 or 3. Due to this time loss, the amount of stations scheduled for sampling had to be reduced.
After hunkering down, more issues with the CTD and the ship’s sea drive were encountered. The sea drive is very important as it is our main method of propulsion. Although understandably uneasy, we remained patient and positive. The crew was able to fix these issues and Courtney moved far enough West for us to skirt past unscathed. We are underway again and back to sampling!
Hopefully this was the last of our major issues (please cross your fingers for us) and check back next week for more updates!
*While writing this, I was just interrupted by some squid sightings on the aft deck. One jumped over 10 feet out of the water and smacked the hull right next to us! I had no idea they got airtime like that, super cool.
