Hi Everyone,
Today was a very hectic day. When I woke up (quite late, as the late night and rolling boat had taken its toll on my sleep) there was essentially no work planned for me for the day as we would be redeploying the P3 mooring the following day. With this in mind I planned a restful day and put my laundry in. I managed to get my laundry into the dryer before it was announced that we would in fact be deploying the mooring in the next hour or so. There was suddenly a lot of time pressure. All of the instruments that we had merrily removed the day before and started sorting out needed to be fixed ASAP. We were actually quite prepared for this, but fell afoul of one of the beacons which should have been easy and simple. This is usually used to communicate with the mooring and locate it, but currently it refused to even turn on. In the end we had to swap it out with another one and hope we can fix it later, after some fairly involved repair attempts.
My main aim for the day had been to spend time on deck and try to spot a penguin. Most of my colleagues had managed to see one by now, but to me it seemed a bit like trying to spot a fairy, you can only see them if you truly believe. Unfortunately, the mooring now took up all of my time and because the depth of the water was around 4km, we had 4km of rope and instrument to slowly release back into the water. This was quite a complex process as it involved dragging the rope slowly behind the ship to ensure it unfurled, but at the right speed so that the end of the mooring ended up in the right location. This was amplified by some difficulties with the winch that led to some ingenious manual solutions.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly from there and towards the end of the 4 hour process I even caught a 30 second glimpse of a penguin, though I was too busy to take a picture or chase it along the ship. I do believe in penguins!
The end of the day was spent very pleasantly in the ship’s movie room watching one of the many movies on offer. Over the years the ship has collected hundreds, possibly thousands, of DVDs through generous donations and other means. Our choice for the evening from this chaotic ensemble was “Swimming with men” which is a very wholesome Rob Brydon comedy about a middle-aged man who has a crisis and joins a synchronised swimming team. It is unbelievably based on a true story (and even has some of the original team starring in it) and we much enjoyed the wholesome vibes even if we did question the moral somewhat.
All in all, a very pleasant day.
29/12/22
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