So over the last few days we've been in dock on the Falkor getting set up and trained and generally prepared for life at sea. It's always exciting getting introduced to a new ship, and the Falkor is a treat for the hard working scientist.
We've been introduced to the ship, introduced to the mess and the coffee machine and introduced to our new home the dry lab, where we will be processing data. It's all looking good so far, we've got a cruise plan which will no doubt change. We've got a scientific mystery to solve and just over 2 weeks to solve it in, with a whole ship and crew at our disposal. I've been amazed at how keen the crew are to help us out and how curious they are about the science that we're doing. Anything that adds enthusiasm to the task at hand is fantastic, and undoubtedly in the long run their curiosity will improve our results. And probably our dedication to the task when fatigue starts to kick in.
We've done the standard safety and protocol inductions, don't slam doors, don't stand in fire doors (my parents trained me well) and don't be a complete fool. We also did a fire drill, which involves preparing to evacuate. It would have been quite a bit more fun had it not been raining with monsoonal enthusiasm on us. But I was pretty impressed with how well we did, putting on life-jackets and high-tailing it to the required locations. It was a bit of a shame that we didn't get to do the whole evacuation, inflatable slides and all, but perhaps some things are better left to the imagination.
We've been introduced to the ship, introduced to the mess and the coffee machine and introduced to our new home the dry lab, where we will be processing data. It's all looking good so far, we've got a cruise plan which will no doubt change. We've got a scientific mystery to solve and just over 2 weeks to solve it in, with a whole ship and crew at our disposal. I've been amazed at how keen the crew are to help us out and how curious they are about the science that we're doing. Anything that adds enthusiasm to the task at hand is fantastic, and undoubtedly in the long run their curiosity will improve our results. And probably our dedication to the task when fatigue starts to kick in.
We've done the standard safety and protocol inductions, don't slam doors, don't stand in fire doors (my parents trained me well) and don't be a complete fool. We also did a fire drill, which involves preparing to evacuate. It would have been quite a bit more fun had it not been raining with monsoonal enthusiasm on us. But I was pretty impressed with how well we did, putting on life-jackets and high-tailing it to the required locations. It was a bit of a shame that we didn't get to do the whole evacuation, inflatable slides and all, but perhaps some things are better left to the imagination.
We've got a lot of training to do over the next few days, on quite a few new systems with new kinds of data. Which is exciting and a very fun kind of challenge.
The Scientific crew is a random bunch we've got two Aussies, one Brit, one Israeli (representing New Hampshire) and a fella from Guam. None of us know each other and only one of us has used these kind of data before. So there's going to be a bit of a social experiment on board as well. The captain is particularly interested to see how it all turns out because we don't have any preconceived ideas of what people can and can't do. All up it's pretty exciting!
The real ocean starts tomorrow.
The Scientific crew is a random bunch we've got two Aussies, one Brit, one Israeli (representing New Hampshire) and a fella from Guam. None of us know each other and only one of us has used these kind of data before. So there's going to be a bit of a social experiment on board as well. The captain is particularly interested to see how it all turns out because we don't have any preconceived ideas of what people can and can't do. All up it's pretty exciting!
The real ocean starts tomorrow.
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