My eyes begrudgingly opened today around noon and the slow but steady accelerations of the rocking ship made their way into my consciousness. I hardly ever wake feeling thoroughly rested but the excitement of starting another day at sea always drags me out of bed. The start of a work day on-board is always preceded by a large cup of coffee and some time spent enjoying the view on the fantail. As I stepped outside the crisp North Atlantic breeze bit at my face and hands; a small price to pay for such an awesome start to the work day (I mean c’mon, there are people sitting in traffic right now). I observed the seabirds for a while, finished my coffee, and headed into the lab to check the instrument. Two of my co-workers, Tom and Mackenzie, were there hovering over our mass spectrometer (a mass spectrometer is a tool chemists use to detect certain molecules in air). These instruments can be bought off the shelf but in our lab we design and build them ourselves, which I think is totally friggin’ cool. However, that being the case, the thing is constantly broken. Mackenzie was shouting out numbers to Tom who was scribbling them down and I could tell from the tone of their voices that something had indeed gone wrong. After a while, I gathered that one of our pumps that delivers an isotopic standard to the instrument had broken. The inevitable constant barrage of broken instruments and faulty software must be matched by our ability to dream up solutions. Our secret weapon in this battle is our instrument tech and first class ideas man, Cyril McCormick. Cyril represents an infinite source of possible solutions to any issue that may arise. If you think your hot stuff, go ask Cyril how anything electronic works and you’re in for a humbling experience. The chief scientist, Mike Behrenfeld, once casually asked Cyril how an optical mouse worked and got a 4 page report back the next day complete with a schematic.

With the pump situation under control the evening eventually faded away to night-time, and less and less people were roaming the halls of the Atlantis. The night shift is great; it adds a whole other dimension to the research cruise experience in my opinion. With no people around, the subtle characteristics and behaviors of the ship become noticeable and it really takes on a personality. Being in the middle of the immense ocean on a relatively small floating platform certainly affords a certain perspective, but when you stand on deck at night with nothing but the moon and the waves, you really feel out there. At 3 am, I made my last rounds to check on the instruments. I promised I would start Mackenzie’s particle sampler in the forward van and as per usual, I couldn’t make it work. I had to rouse her from her sleep to get it going; she seems to be the only person that thing obeys. As we were walking back to the main lab there was a faint glow in the sky. This far north in the spring, dawn starts really friggin’ early. Time for bed, repeat in the morning.

Cheers!

Written by Jack Porter

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2016 at 2:28 pm and is filed under NAAMES (North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study), Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.