It's oh so quiet...

Hello to the people who read this...
It's been pretty quiet the last couple of days.. so nothing to really write about.
It rained a little bit yesterday, but not much... looks like we are getting more rain today and expecting a bit rougher seas tonight... nothing too significant I don't think...

Launching a probe... watching the sun set over the Atlantic....














like in this picture by Kevin D....make things a little easier....

The sunsets have been pretty nice...
I am not sure if they are as nice as they were when I was on the Coriolis.. but they are certainly nice enough to watch....

Other than that.. not much else is going on...
I'm trying to find things to do with my days... I've been reading a lot of comics.
I still have a couple left to read, but the unread ones are disappearing quick.
I went for a couple of walks around the Heli-deck.. and around the boat. Its nice, but I can only go in circles for so long.

Christopher Jones (The Navigator) and I have been playing a lot of Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors). The Russian observer team, Pavel and Alex, think we are crazy. Especially Alex. He might be right...

Christopher Jones














The food is still quite good. A little bit too much junk food.. Way too many cookies.. I try to avoid them as much as possible..but its hard when they are EVERYWHERE... I opened a cupboard looking for cereal the other day and was faced with 15 boxes of oreo cookies.. I closed the door as fast as I could and found my rice crispies...

I'll continue posting news here when things of interest happen... or when I am bored out of my mind...



Hope all is well back in the real world...

Man Overboard..... not a drill.. but a false Alarm.... *PHEW*

So we had a bit of a scare this morning.
The Man Overboard alarm went off...
They take this shit very seriously...
We rushed up to our muster station and then up to the Heli-deck to look for anyone who may have gone overboard. But there was no one..
Once we all got checked off we realized no one was missing...
There were a couple of possible ways the alarm could have been tripped. But we are not sure what happened right now.

After they determined no one was missing we all met in the mess hall and discussed the incident. Sounds like we might be doing another practise session since we didn't do very well on this go round....

I'm just glad no one really got thrown over board.
By the time we would have launched the rescue boat, the guy would have been over a mile.. almost 2 miles behind us.
Imagine trying to find a little head bobbing up and down.. presumably with no lifejacket... in an area that large...

I can understand why they take this stuff so seriously...

What a day...

Today has been pretty interesting. I had yet another Sippican fail, thats 4 in a row.. so I decided it was time for drastic measures. With the aid of a couple of the Phillipino crew members the cable to the launcher has been spliced and an extra 100Ft has been added. They did an awesome job. The splice looks great, and I can launch my Sippican's from almost anywhere now. And now I am safely away from the water and I won't be needing to wear all that crazy getup anymore..

This will help a lot... I HOPE...
I haven't launched another probe yet, but I did run throught the setup and it seems like everything is working fine.

Its also a beautiful day.. I just went for a walk on the Heli-deck. Its such an awesome view up there... a lot of the crew go up there just to walk around and get some air.. Its loud up there, really loud, so I had my ipod on, with my big headphones.. which help block some of the outside noise.. listening to Sigur Ros... made that much more enjoyable then the churning noise of the engines. You can see forever up there... well almost...and the sea is incredibly calm today.. I'll add some pictures shortly.. I know I keep saying that, but I really will..

Things are going good.
It looks like I will be back in town on the 11th to refuel. Thats the plan anyway.. its unfortunate that we didn't have a full load of fuel because we could have finished the job in one run. Instead we have to spend 2 days going back to Nova Scotia.. a day or 2 refuelling, then 2 days back to finish the survey, more survey time and then 2 more days back to Nova Scotia again... So I am estimating that this trip will be done around August 20th. Will see...

We had a safety meeting a couple of days ago.. which I was late for...oops. I got the time wrong.The medic/safety guy was talking about putting little pink ribbons around things that he saw that could be a safety hazard... some people didn't think to highly of that idea. I kind of feel bad for the Medic. I won't get into it... but anyway, I try to be nice to him when I can....

More stuff on my facebook page...Here...

Discharge

Just a funny note.. Apparently the captain was looking for me earlier because one of the deck hands told him that I was "discharging" something over the side of the boat...

He thought I was dumping toxic material overboard... WTF?

Someone explained the situation to him ... that all I was doing was launching a Sippican.. to do a CTD cast and get a Sound Velocity Profile...

As you can probably tell from the photo, thats not me... just a pic I found online, but thats what I do... a little rocket looking thing falls out of the gun and it goes down to 1800 m and it takes a sound velocity reading.

I'll try and get a picture of me doing it.. Its much more dramatic... She looks like she at least one deck up... I am right next to the waves.

Sippicans

So Sippicans are this neat little rocket looking thing... I might have mentioned them before, but what they do is measure depth, time and the velocity of sound in the water.

Not a big deal, but the fun part is when I actually launch the sippicans. Its a really simple process, but the physical aspect of it can be a bit scary. On "nice" days its easy... all days have been beautiful out, but that doesn't mean the waves aren't big.. I have a new appreciation for the power of the Ocean.

For my first launch, I shot a probe over the side and it was a pretty average day. I didn't wear a harness, and really didn't NEED to... rookie mistake... I should have worn one, nothing happened, but I should have worn one.

The waves come up over the railing at the side of the boat... and as waves do.... they go up and down.... ALOT.. I get wet .. alot...nothing I can do about it, its part of the job...and I don't mind. I wear rain gear and I stay as dry as possible... its also really warm back there, I have to walk throught the engine room to get to the area where I launch the Sippicans. I don't know how those guys deal with the heat.

Anyway, as I am launching the probes picture walls of water the height of a basketball net or higher coming up towards you.. and every once in a while they come up over the railing and I get drenched. Needless to say I wear my harness everytime now.. I could EASILY get swept up overboard.. VERY easily...yesterday was the scariest.. the waves were BIG.. and it was still beautiful outside.. 18 Knot winds.. but the waves were 3m, thats what the weather report said anyway, sure looked bigger to me. Especially when you are right next to them.

I am able to keep my cool... but lets just say I am VERY awake when I do this... I usually do one first thing in the morning, and it wakes me up faster than any cup of coffee ever would. Funny how I have yet to have a coffee while on the cruise. Its actually fun once you get used to it and know you are safely strapped in. I get to enjoy the beautiful view. And watch the power of the waves... I often see some kind of coral looking thing floating around. I always hope one comes up onto the ship so I can get a look at it.

I'd love to take my camera out and take some pictures while I am launching the Sippican, but I know that I would just get the camera wet.. and the salt water wouldn't do my camera much good. I might ask one of the guys to take some pictures for me.

See ya in 6 weeks!!

Well after several days of delays I am finally off.I actually left thursday afternoon from Pier 28 in Halifax.

We are working in the Sohm Abyssal Plain south east of Nova Scotia. Its incredibly deep here. Right now our depth is 5631.2 meters. Yeah thats right, over 5 kilometers deep... thats pretty crazy if you ask me.

The crew that I have met have all been pretty nice so far. I think I've been nicknamed 'shorty' but I might have heard wrong.. I am rooming with one of the cooks who is from the Phillipines. He seems like a very nice guy. He told me that the Phillipino crew members sign on to 6 month contracts. He got on right around the same time as I did, so he will be on here until around January. Thats pretty crazy if you ask me..

One of the Phillipino crew members saw me as I was heading to the back deck. I, along with the other crew members, had on bright orange coveralls. Mine were 2XL. So a tad on the big side.. I think the Phillipino guy thought I looked pretty silly... I have to agree.. I'll try and get a picture of myself in it sometime tomorrow.

I did some practice runs at collecting and processing data and I think everything looks good. Still a bit nervous about it... It hard getting used to working when everything is rocking back and forth and you are trying to concentrate. The only thing I can compare it to is trying to concentrate during a mild earthquake... everything is always moving.. I'll get used to it. I did last time.

I've been taking my Bonamine, so I haven't got seasick yet. And at this point I don't think I will. When we were transitting from Halifax to the work site we were going 9 knots. My room is at the front of the boat, so when things are rough the stuff at the front experiences the most rocking.. know that it woke me up a couple of times last night.. currently we are only going 3.6 knots. Considerably slower than last night. I believe that our speed during the survey will be around 6 knots. I'm not about to stop taking my seasickness meds just yet... but I think I'm in a safe 'no-puking' zone now.

Some of the crew just started putting the seismic streamers into the water and it will be some time before they will be ready to start collecting data.I haven't taken any pictures yet.. its 11:30 Atlantic time now, so there isn't much point of taking pictures.. I'll be sure to post some up when I take them. I was feeling a little bit homesick yesterday, mostly because I was pretty bored. I've got plenty of stuff to read and DVDs to watch.. but I was still worried about making sure everything was going smoothly so didn't read too much, or watch any DVDs.

Feel free to write to me and let me know whats going on back in the world.
(WRITE TO ME!!)

GSI Pacific....

So I am heading out for around 6 weeks on the GSI Pacific Seismic boat. This will be my second time working offshore and while I am still relatively new at it, I am looking forward to it. I'm not sure how my time away will be but I've brought plenty to read and lots of DVDs to watch, and I will have internet access on the boat as well, so I will try and keep this blog updated regularly.

My job on board is pretty simple.. I have 3 things to do.

1. Launch Sippicans every 12 hrs and convert the data they collect into sound velocity profiles. Basically sound travels at different rates depending on the temperature and pressure of the water. We collect this data to correct the data that is collected by the single beam echosounder (Depth data).

2. I have to collect the Single beam data. Everything has been set up for me, all I have to do is turn on the data collection... poof.. and it collects data... It will collect data pretty much 24 hrs a day as long as we are running lines that we need to collect data on.

3. I need to process the data. I won't go into details on this, but I just clean the data and get it ready for use. Its a pretty simple process.

I've been going to the boat almost every day to check things out. As of now it looks like I will be leaving thursday or friday. Wish me luck....