Just a recap of the past week.
Sat(11-8)-Wed(11-12): 60miles south of Bermuda. On a ship. In the Atlantic. I learned how to tie 3 knots.
Thur(11-13): Back to Detroit. Within an hour, ate McDonalds.
Friday(11-14): I got a ring.
Saturday(11-15): Sat in the rain and sleet to watch UM football. Left to see Bond. Ricks for 5+ hours.
Sunday(11-16): Back to Bermuda. No sleep for 30 hrs.
Monday(11-17): 74 degrees. How's the snow MI?
I guess I'll go into more detail on the Cruise and the Weekend in MI, but to start watch this video........see now you're already laughing.
B241 - BATS Cruise #241------Leg 1: Saturday(11/08) - Wednesday(11-12)
Work Deck, waiting to leave
I think another FAQ will be the best way to recap the trip.
Q: Doug! How was your cruise??
A: It was fucking awesome.
Q: Oh...well what'd you do?
A: Um. Saturday, we departed early around 8am or so. It took us about 6 hours to cruise out to our first deployment site. Ship traveled at 10knots. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour. Nautical mile is a little farther than a mile. At our first station(station as in general lat/long, we have stations for multiple research areas) we threw in a CTD. Conductivy, Temperature, Depth. It looks like this:
So basically at each station or so we'd drop this big CTD down in the water. It gets dropped down to whatever depth, let's say 500m. Once it gets to its maximum depth it will start to be pulled up. At a specified depth, a large bottle, is "fired" or closed from the boat remotely and retains about 12L of water. There are 24 bottles attached to the CTD, CTDs are dropped multiple times at each station if necessary, and sampling depths ranged from 4200m(about half of Mt. Everest) to 150m. It took about 4hrs for the CTD to hit 4200m.
Besides many CTDs, we worked on the Main Deck to deploy several buoys. For CTD's scientists don't do anything with lowering it or bringing it back up. So working on the Main Deck was more enjoyable because I got to do shit with a workvest and a hard hat on. On a boat. In the Ocean.
Sorry, I've gotten off track with the FAQ.
Q: What did you do on the work deck.
A: I wore a work vest and a hard hat. On a boat. In the Ocean.
Q: That's it?
A: Basically, I didn't do too much, but help out and hold lines...just being taught safety stuff and what basically they're doing. A few crew members help out to operate the A frame(big thing that holds the line. Directly above the photographer in the photo) and the winch(yellow thing, center of photo) that pulls line in. The chief scientist works with the crew and is in charge of the 1 or 2 other scientists helping with the deployment. So, I held lines, helped pull buoys in, attached instruments to line. I also learned how to tie off the line to a cleat. Never really did that before, but I got the hang of it after having the crew/sci's wait on me for fumbling around with the line and knot for the first few times. After much practice, I got a round of appluase when I did it quickly and flawlessly. Jojo, the philipino crew member operating the main winch bet me I couldn't tie one down in under 3 seconds. I made it in 1 second. What up Jojo.
Q: How long were you working?
A: Not long, each scientist has his or her own deployments and occasionally helps out others, but you might have to work 2 hrs deploying. Maybe 2hrs prepping and 1hr collecting water from a CTD. Somedays you have nothing going on, somedays more. They were relatively easy work days though.
Q: What did you do besides work?
A: I slept about 12 hrs a day. The seas were calm, so it gave the boat a nice rocking motion that puts you right to sleep and makes you not want to get up. I ate a lot. The two cooks, Greg and Buddy were phenomenol. Huge breakfasts everyday and great lunches and dinners. Plus they had a huge drawer or candy, with those candies with the strawberry on top and the liquidish center. Also, lots of movies and tv series were watched in our lounge. The lounge made me realize, leather couches aren't comforable, unless you like having an itchy, sweaty back after 2 hours sitting, watching a movie. And of course, I did a lot of time just hanging out on the top deck with a few other students, that were accompanying us on the trip. Very relaxing.
Q: Did you see anything cool?
A: Flying Fish. I was hoping for a pod of dolphins to swim by. Then have one get attacked by a shark, but as the dolphin is getting taken down, his dolphriends come back and start jumping out of the water to dive bomb the shark. Doing tons of crazy flips like in seaworld. The shark can't take it and starts swimming away, ONLY TO RETURN WITH MORE SHARKS. I think I got a shot to see it next cruise.
Q: Can you swim while out there?
A: No aparently, some lady got her leg ripped off by a shark. I think this made me want to jump in the water even more.
ahhhhhh. No more swimming off research vessels.
Q: Anything else interesting?
A: Of course, I wouldn't of written that if nothing happened. When we were returning to Bermuda we got a Mayday call from a sinking Sailboat. I guess we had seen the Sailboat at about 3am the previous night and never radioed to them(wasn't neccessary at the time). So, we had to get off the Atlantic Exploer to hop on to the pilot boat(directs big cruise ships into Bermuda) about a half-mile off from Bermuda. The group was rescued by a Chinese Tanker who was much closer than our R/V Atlantic Explorer, so the it was not neccessary for our ship to respond to the Mayday call.
Anyways, the trip was great, I'm excited to go back out there which will probably be in January or Feb. Its pretty cool to think that this is my job.
Back to MI
Ughhhh, more writing. Aparently this is the time to give shoutouts. We'll see.
I flew back in Thursday for the weekend return to Ann Arbor. I immeidately was rushed to a McDonalds by my parents. I think I didn't order maybe 2 or 3 things on the Dollar Menu.
Thursday and Friday consisted of getting more things together for my apartment. I now have a shower curtain.
Friday night, was the big reason I flew in. Championship rings.
It was real, real good to see everyone. I was very happy to hear Robert has a job and that Lehman still has one. I forgot how large Graham is, jesus. How the hell was I cool with standing next to you for 4 years?
As soon as the rings were receieved and the congradulations were said the weekend turned into a blur. Starting with Ricks and ending with Ricks. In between was a return to the lacrosse house. A sleety, miserably bad football game by Michigan. And the new Bond. All in all a great weekend.
Returning to Bermuda was long and tiring, but I noticed something as soon as I got there. I was home. And I was happy to be there. It was great to see everybody and return to real home, but it made me relieved to know that I made the right decision to commit 2 years of my life to Bermuda.
So that's it for catching up. I can now get back to post more crap a find online and make you read. Thanks for reading Ely. You're the only one that would read this far.
Cheers,
Doug
Q: Doug! How was your cruise??
A: It was fucking awesome.
Q: Oh...well what'd you do?
A: Um. Saturday, we departed early around 8am or so. It took us about 6 hours to cruise out to our first deployment site. Ship traveled at 10knots. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour. Nautical mile is a little farther than a mile. At our first station(station as in general lat/long, we have stations for multiple research areas) we threw in a CTD. Conductivy, Temperature, Depth. It looks like this:
So basically at each station or so we'd drop this big CTD down in the water. It gets dropped down to whatever depth, let's say 500m. Once it gets to its maximum depth it will start to be pulled up. At a specified depth, a large bottle, is "fired" or closed from the boat remotely and retains about 12L of water. There are 24 bottles attached to the CTD, CTDs are dropped multiple times at each station if necessary, and sampling depths ranged from 4200m(about half of Mt. Everest) to 150m. It took about 4hrs for the CTD to hit 4200m.
Besides many CTDs, we worked on the Main Deck to deploy several buoys. For CTD's scientists don't do anything with lowering it or bringing it back up. So working on the Main Deck was more enjoyable because I got to do shit with a workvest and a hard hat on. On a boat. In the Ocean.
Sorry, I've gotten off track with the FAQ.Q: What did you do on the work deck.
A: I wore a work vest and a hard hat. On a boat. In the Ocean.
Q: That's it?
A: Basically, I didn't do too much, but help out and hold lines...just being taught safety stuff and what basically they're doing. A few crew members help out to operate the A frame(big thing that holds the line. Directly above the photographer in the photo) and the winch(yellow thing, center of photo) that pulls line in. The chief scientist works with the crew and is in charge of the 1 or 2 other scientists helping with the deployment. So, I held lines, helped pull buoys in, attached instruments to line. I also learned how to tie off the line to a cleat. Never really did that before, but I got the hang of it after having the crew/sci's wait on me for fumbling around with the line and knot for the first few times. After much practice, I got a round of appluase when I did it quickly and flawlessly. Jojo, the philipino crew member operating the main winch bet me I couldn't tie one down in under 3 seconds. I made it in 1 second. What up Jojo.
Q: How long were you working?
A: Not long, each scientist has his or her own deployments and occasionally helps out others, but you might have to work 2 hrs deploying. Maybe 2hrs prepping and 1hr collecting water from a CTD. Somedays you have nothing going on, somedays more. They were relatively easy work days though.
Q: What did you do besides work?
A: I slept about 12 hrs a day. The seas were calm, so it gave the boat a nice rocking motion that puts you right to sleep and makes you not want to get up. I ate a lot. The two cooks, Greg and Buddy were phenomenol. Huge breakfasts everyday and great lunches and dinners. Plus they had a huge drawer or candy, with those candies with the strawberry on top and the liquidish center. Also, lots of movies and tv series were watched in our lounge. The lounge made me realize, leather couches aren't comforable, unless you like having an itchy, sweaty back after 2 hours sitting, watching a movie. And of course, I did a lot of time just hanging out on the top deck with a few other students, that were accompanying us on the trip. Very relaxing.
Q: Did you see anything cool?
A: Flying Fish. I was hoping for a pod of dolphins to swim by. Then have one get attacked by a shark, but as the dolphin is getting taken down, his dolphriends come back and start jumping out of the water to dive bomb the shark. Doing tons of crazy flips like in seaworld. The shark can't take it and starts swimming away, ONLY TO RETURN WITH MORE SHARKS. I think I got a shot to see it next cruise.
Q: Can you swim while out there?
A: No aparently, some lady got her leg ripped off by a shark. I think this made me want to jump in the water even more.
ahhhhhh. No more swimming off research vessels.
Q: Anything else interesting?
A: Of course, I wouldn't of written that if nothing happened. When we were returning to Bermuda we got a Mayday call from a sinking Sailboat. I guess we had seen the Sailboat at about 3am the previous night and never radioed to them(wasn't neccessary at the time). So, we had to get off the Atlantic Exploer to hop on to the pilot boat(directs big cruise ships into Bermuda) about a half-mile off from Bermuda. The group was rescued by a Chinese Tanker who was much closer than our R/V Atlantic Explorer, so the it was not neccessary for our ship to respond to the Mayday call.
Anyways, the trip was great, I'm excited to go back out there which will probably be in January or Feb. Its pretty cool to think that this is my job.
Back to MI
Ughhhh, more writing. Aparently this is the time to give shoutouts. We'll see.
I flew back in Thursday for the weekend return to Ann Arbor. I immeidately was rushed to a McDonalds by my parents. I think I didn't order maybe 2 or 3 things on the Dollar Menu.
Thursday and Friday consisted of getting more things together for my apartment. I now have a shower curtain.
Friday night, was the big reason I flew in. Championship rings.
It was real, real good to see everyone. I was very happy to hear Robert has a job and that Lehman still has one. I forgot how large Graham is, jesus. How the hell was I cool with standing next to you for 4 years?
As soon as the rings were receieved and the congradulations were said the weekend turned into a blur. Starting with Ricks and ending with Ricks. In between was a return to the lacrosse house. A sleety, miserably bad football game by Michigan. And the new Bond. All in all a great weekend.
Returning to Bermuda was long and tiring, but I noticed something as soon as I got there. I was home. And I was happy to be there. It was great to see everybody and return to real home, but it made me relieved to know that I made the right decision to commit 2 years of my life to Bermuda.
So that's it for catching up. I can now get back to post more crap a find online and make you read. Thanks for reading Ely. You're the only one that would read this far.
Cheers,
Doug
3 comments:
You're welcome Doug
doug, some of us have jobs that largely consist of dicking around on the internet so we always read everything. thanks for entertaining us.
How much was the duty on the shower curtain?
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