Leg three, the beginning

February 28

I have to admit that I’m starting to “lean north” as we used to say in McMurdo. I am ready to go home and sleep a little bit. Although sleeping on a non-rocking bed would be hard.
During the stop-over in Hobart I had the bestest time with my Australian friends, I smelled the trees and played with kids and felt rejuvenated. I had to do some work during the Punta Arenas stop-over. I also did not get to stay off the ship, so I slept in my cabin even in port. And honestly – maybe it’s for the best. Going back to ship after a night in a real bed would have been that much harder.

That said our first day at sea was really smooth and peaceful. We observed the solar eclipse in the morning (see my previous post) and had one of the most spectacular sunsets.

We did our first CTD station on February 27 and then did another station on February 28. The second one was shorter and only our project sampled the water from it – so it got designated “Masha station” on the white board in the expedition office.

I told you I will become an oceanographer ;)

Drake Passage

February, 19 

I am writing this text in the middle of Drake Passage. Somehow this means a lot to me – I remember looking at the world map as a kid – Drake Passage was one of the first names I noticed. I guess it was one of the few titles I could actually reach and read as it was at the bottom just above Antarctica. I never thought I'd get to sail here...

We have been working really hard collecting ocean data from the Southern Ocean and now the Southern Pacific. We had on average at least one CTD station per day. This translates in collecting a lot of ocean water into small bottles, labeling and organizing them. I go up and down the stairs with boxes and bins full of bottles quite frequently now – getting new ones for the future samples and putting away the full ones into cargo containers. I get a lot of comments on my “bottle clicking sound”. I have to say that to me personally the clicking bottle sound associates with a alcoholic collecting empty bottles every the morning in order get a some money for recycling and get a small “morning” drink (опохмелиться). My colleagues tell me the sound reminds them of the milkman coming to their house every morning on milk deliveries. I like their association much better!

Working so hard made us all feel like a team, which is a good feeling. Yesterday we had a station right after dinner around 8pm and then another one at 5 am in the morning. Most of us did not sleep in between, as it was about midnight when we were done sampling, we advanced the clock again and going to bed seems like a stupid idea. After the early morning station and watching the sunrise together we all went to bed – it was funny how we were wishing each other good night around 10 o’clock in the morning.

We are much further North now, so we have real darkness once again. We were working tonight through the night again and it was pitch black. I wanted to take a picture of It, but nothing came out. Such a weird sighting after the perpetual daylight. I have to say polar days are my favorite, you can choose your own schedule and it is pretty outside all the time. I miss polar days!

We only have a few days left in leg two, we are due to arrive in Punta Arenas on February 22nd. With the cruise report due and some repacking to do I am not sure how much I will be able to post to the blog. I will try to update from Punta! I am also expecting to have internet access for a couple of days, so I will be able to read comments from people (I hope there are some comments ;)))). Also recommendations on what to do in Punta Arenas are very much appreciated!

Thank you,
Masha

December 21, 2016

We finally left Cape Town just a little short of midnight today, so officially marked our 24 hour at sea point.
It has been rather rocky ever since we left, becoming worse throughout the day. I will not lie to you, I felt sick most of the day. I think it was mainly due to my general exhaustion of the last week of port call. I needed that break honestly.
Once again both the crew and my fellow colleagues have been wonderful, helping me out with the tasks I needed to complete today and were not physically able to do. What would I have done without them? Alas, I have been helping out everyone a lot too. What a great group of people and I am lucky to be a part of it.

Science wise we did manage to do a test CTD cast today at 2 PM ship time (12 PM UTC). We only went to 200m, it was rather dangerous and rocky. The swell was up to 8 m when we pulled the rosette up - the crew thought that all scientists are a little crazy :).

One thing that I absolutely needed to get up for today was a boat drill. Happy to inform all of you that I "survived", emergency gear is ok and aside from a terrible smell inside the rescue boats they are ok, equipped with water, dry rations, satellite emergency finders etc.

The boat drill and the CTD cast (where I have to admit I was mainly observing) wiped me out and I went back to bed. I did try to help out with translating different minor and not so minor issues on the way, but I decided that my own personal wellbeing should come first. So I had the best nap before dinner and woke up feeling much better.

The weather is predicted to get worse tomorrow, so we are not doing another cast. I am planning to sleep it off and get more adjusted to the rocky seas cause there is more to come. Just to give my observant readers a point of reference - my cabin is one deck below the main deck - the row of windows in the orange: section 

 This is a picture of Tryoshnikov docked in Cape Town for your reference of how high the swell is. 

So today we had water splashing into our cabin window pretty much throughout all day. I wonder what "tomorrow will be worse" mean for our veto out of the window. I mean it changes, sometimes it water,and sometimes it is all clouds. Cool stuff when you are not sick because of it :).

We are also changing clock during the night tomorrow - we will go one hour ahead. Oh, and internet is very limited, so I no pictures so far. It might get a little better or it might get worse, hard to predict...
Till later,
Masha

P.S. That’s how the storm looked before midnight: the snapshot from Global winds map :