Steaming to the Newport Hydroline (9/8/09)

Josh Manger snaps a shot of Cape Disappointment as the New Horizon clears the Columbia River bar

Today was perhaps the most restful day of the cruise. The morning was taken up by crew transfers and gear deployments, and the afternoon was spent steaming to the Newport Hydroline, where CTD operations will resume tomorrow morning. We had to give up Fred Prahl and Caroline Fortunado in a science crew exchange with the Point Sur, but we did acquire Matt Wolhowe (my new roommate). Matt has sailed with a few members of our sci-team already, so he fell right into things. Matt will be operating the wiggly dee-vice, among other things.

Michael Wilkin delivers Tim McGinnis and Chris Sianti to the New Horizon to deploy an acoustic node in the north channel

We also received a special visit from Michael Wilkin on his zodiak. He came with Tim McGinnis and Chris Siani of UW-APL, with the purpose of deploying a new observation platform on the floor of the estuary - a package of sensors within a protective boat gear resistant housing, that will transmit its data through the water using sound (no wires!) These nodes are new technology, so they will take some time for the issues to be worked out. Once they are reliably operational, however, they will relieve our observatory from a major constraint: the need for some hard object upon which to fasten our gear -- a feature which is, quite by necessity, absent from large and important parts of the estuary like the navigation channel.

The acoustic node just prior to deployment

The official protocol for when the New Horizon is attacked by pirates

While idly exploring the walls of the lab I came upon the above posting, which I found absolutely fascinating! It's probably the sort of tactically-important information that I will get into trouble for posting on the web, but this little section probably won't get anyone's dander up. The whole "pirate-problem" has finally entered into my day to day life! I must admit to being a little unsure about reporting to my station with axe in hand, ready to repel hostiles. I think I missed the hand-to-hand combat part of the training. Too bad I don't have my copy of the Lord of the Rings, I could just study all those scenes of Gimli repelling orcs at Helm's Deep. Guess I'll just have to do it from memory. Good thing I watched those movies about 28 times.

Sara, Collen and Justin received the best books ever from their UW buddies -- "How to Get Along With Girls", "How to Get Along With Boys", and "The Art of Kissing". We've been pulling gems of wisdom from the books and adding them to our white board for everyone's edification. Today's entry should be useful to all you boys out there as you travel trails through the Jungle of Love.

The New Horizon collected a dizzyingly large collection of beach flies while anchored in the Columbia, who, now that we're out in the middle of the ocean, have been clinging for dear life to the crew. Unfortunately, the crew isn't very sympathetic, and a large number of the cute little guys have been meeting unfortunate ends. Brutal.

Missy Gilbert and the Autonomous Profiling Nutrient Analyzer (APNA)

These two have an intense love-hate relationship going on. Missy lavishes all sorts of attention on her APNA, getting it calibrated and plumbed properly, then she just leaves it in the back of the lab, to work by itself, all alone. The APNA, for it's part, is fussy and leaky, constantly saying everything is copacetic, then kicking out goofy numbers when Missy's back is turned. Kurat! But when they are working as a team, that APNA provides real-time analyses of nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, phosphate, and silica! And I'll tell you what, it's pretty awesome when that happens! Pretty soon, Missy will have that APNA kicking out real-time data in the field, providing CMOP's observatory with tremendously valuable ecosystem data.

Chief scientist Tawnya Peterson at the CTD station