2011.01.20
20:05HST
Barna, A
R/V Kilo Moana

Conditions

  • Lat: 16 52.502 N
  • Lon: 168.38.709 W
  • Speed: 0 Kts
  • Heading: Holding Station
  • Sal: 34.450 PSU
  • SST: 26.17 °C
  • Pres: 1012 mbar
  • Air Temp: 24 °C

Weather and Sea State Observations

A incredibly nice day. Swell height perhaps 3-4 meters. Cloud cover is 25%

Journal Entry

I guess one could say I’ve developed a routine now. It isn’t as difficult to wake up at the strange hours now and I don’t feel like I’m sleep deprived. A few rounds of CTD casts were completed on my watch and the VMP was recovered. The VMP is so much easier to recover at night, largely due to a flashing strobe on the top of it. With no other ships around if you are looking out at the darkness and see something flashing, it’s the VMP.

Afterward, I had breakfast, today could best be described as a nutty day. Breakfast was whole wheat pecan pancakes that my mom would have been proud of. And, as usual, I went to bed after breakfast.

And after sleep I assisted with a broken winch for a bit. This was the big event today, a broken winch. Lucky for us, the CTD was on deck when the winch decided to break. After about 4 hours of engineers running around with manuals larger than most dictionaries, we were up and running again.

Lunch today was a “chili cook off.” I’m not sure if there was a competition, but I preferred the beef chili due to its right amount of spice. After lunch I did some studying. My afternoon watch stared with the CTD already in the water on its way up. The pinger we use to track the package was malfunctioning so we had to bring it on deck for a quick replacement.

Thinking about it, today was also a day of things breaking. The CTD winch broke, the CTD pinger broke, the weight release on the VMP broke, I’m told something might have broken on the moorings. We have several ideas as to what the cause might be. Aliens, the winch was making some funny noises this morning and abduction was feared. An “Andrew singularity,” during the VMP recovery all three people on board named Andrew were in the same place for the first time, causing massive gravitational disturbances throughout the ship. Government mind control, a lining of tin foil was noticed around one of the labs.

Due to other activities that pulled my watchmate away from CTD duties, I was left in charge of the CTD for about an hour. This involves coordinating a few people and making sure the CTD doesn’t hit the bottom. I’ve never made these decisions by myself so it was interesting to be responsible for a bit. In hindsight, I was rather comfortable with running the operation, I guess this is good news for the future.

Tomorrow the first of the moorings is going back in the water at some early morning crazy hour and the swell is predicted to get larger. The good news about the swell is, it is long period so there is a nice rocking motion.