Hi Everyone,
Today was a really fun day, with some great food, getting the ship and labs ready to sail, and an evening trip around Montevideo!
We began the day with an amazing buffet breakfast at 7:30am. We had the full range from full English breakfast to some continental pastries, cereal and very fancy overnight oats. The galley here is certainly making a good first impression. I worry that if I keep eating as well as I am, I may put on a lot of weight by the time I return!
As this was our first full day on the ship and we aimed to sail the next day the main tasks were setting up the plethora of scientific equipment around the ship. The true highlight of the day was assisting Evelyn (a fellow PhD) with the setup and testing of her atmospheric chemistry setup on the fore mast. This involved replacing some metal tubing from the atmospheric lab all the way to the mast at the front of the ship and then a couple of people sitting at the top of the mast breathing into the entrance point to estimate the lag time between gases entering the equipment and reaching the sensor. However, as soon as we began the calibration, Evelyn foolishly mentioned that she could see how much CO2 was in each person’s breath and so the competition began. With each person desperately trying to overtake the others, we had people contorting themselves to get as close to the intake as possible, holding their breath, and debating the different elements of breath control to maximise their score. Chris (a fellow PhD) achieved the record measurement of 10,000ppm which was very impressive. As a final comparison, looking at the other gases we learnt that some people have methane in their breath while others don’t, which was fascinating and also seemed to correlate with meat consumption (in a somewhat small sample).
Finally, we rounded off the day with a trip out to Montevideo, enjoying the sights of the nearby city (although I did have rather low expectations, as the tourist guide online recommends “tours of Montevideo” as 8 of the top 10 attractions, implying there wasn’t much there…). However, there were some highlights, including a huge statue of Artigas (a Uruguayan national hero from the wars of Independence, though to be honest we had no idea and had to look him up later). After dinner we headed out to a nearby bar where we were introduced to the Brazilian drink “Capirinha” which was very strong (and sadly made with vodka rather than cachaça, the traditional cane sugar-based liqueur).
Tomorrow we sail from Montevideo out into the unknown, can’t wait!
21/12/22
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