Another day of calm waters and little wind. There was an unannounced safety drill at 10:30 with a few grumpy people in pyjamas gathering for a 'man overboard' exercise so for the unsociable watches it was a day of grab a sleep when you can.
Today Ribanna Dittrich, a SAMS/UHI undergraduate who has just completed 1st year, shares her thoughts with us.
My day started quite early in the morning at about 8(ish). I
am a member of the “day gang” or the “slackers” as the watches call us. I don’t
really understand why. According to the plan, we do have the longest shift from
9(ish) a.m. to 9(ish) p.m. That’s a 12-hour-shift! Ok, we might finish work 3-4
hours earlier…every day…and we might have a few breaks between work…every day.
But it would probably be really exhausting if we worked the whole time, I
guess. There is not much to do for me though as a first year student who has
been very lucky to get one of the highly coveted places on board the Discovery.
I am assisting Clare Johnson analysing aluminium
concentrations to trace water masses. Chemistry is used to underpin physics.
Amazing, isn’t it?! (or as we would say on board “This is some Big Boy S***!”) Samples
are only taken in deeper depths of more than 1,000 meters. That means we don’t get
as many samples as all the other busy people around us. Even though we are also
analysing samples of last year’s Ellett line, there is still plenty of time
left every day to be squandered away. During the last couple of days, I found
myself planning our first night out in Reykjavik. The first night after 3 weeks
of counting and rationing our weekly alcohol units (you have to know that we
are only allowed to drink 14 units per week. The guys get 21!). So next Friday
is going to be legendary!
The North Atlantic is still on its best behaviour so far.
The sea is very calm and we had as many sunny days as we had grey days. Today
can be counted as another sunshine day. It’s summer out here.
John Wynar bathing in the sun on the front deck!
At 10.30 am we had a “man-over-board-safety-drill” where we
were all staring at the sea, trying to find the imaginary man over board (quite
difficult task) and waiting for him to be rescued.
We are now heading towards Iceland along the last 17 stations
and tonight, the first Apex float is going to be deployed. Also tonight, there
shall be a Perseid meteor shower. Where is it better to see shooting stars than
in absolute darkness?! And believe me, it is incredibly dark out here!
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As Ribanna has pointed out, the Apex float will be deployed tonight about midnight as part of the Argos programme. Tomorrow Karen will tell us all about it. In the meantime, the following map will show our progress so far.
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