August 12, 2006 Options

[Steve_Stevenoski]

August 12, 2006

Doc Carr was on the treadmill at 7:00 when I arrive at the gym for a morning a run on the treadmill. It was obvious that the ship was in transit. Whenever the ship breaks through a large flow of ice, the ice gets pushed down and away from the hull. As the ice moves away and the ship moves forward, the ship rolls from left to right. When you are climbing the stairs, or you happen to be running on the treadmill, it is particularly noticeable. When you are in bed the motion gently rocks you to sleep. Every once in a while, we hit a large piece of ice that grinds against the hull, making it ring like a bell. The noise can be heard everywhere throughout the ship.

Instrument Preparation


We should be at station sometime this afternoon depending on the speed we can make with the ice. Saturday is inspection day. Last Saturday the science conference room was not properly cleaned. The Ex O was in the conference room right at 10:00 to start inspection. We passed, but could use improvement.

Rob has been taking care of burning most of the paper generated in the labs in the ship incinerator. The ship has a policy of recycling. Paper is collected in paper grocery bags and burned. Plastics are stored and compacted in a container on the port side helicopter deck level. Metals and food waste are put over the side. Anything that falls out of these categories is compacted in the container and will be land filled when the ship makes port in Seattle later this summer.

Ready to Fly


Garbage had not been properly sorted in the science conference room so Rob got stuck sorting the dirty mess into the appropriate categories. Krill and Steffen picked through the garbage in the main lab, but their job was not as difficult as Rob's. Rob sent a gentle email reminder to all of us about the trash separation. We all need to be more proactive no matter how busy we are.

At 3:00 we came on station to take a jumbo piston core near a steep slope on the Mendelev Ridge. The first core was in the water by 3:59 and recovered by 6:00. The tension on the winch line was the largest recorded this cruise, over 14000 lbs. This would indicate good penetration into the sediments. Once on deck, it was confirmed that a good core hade been taken. They looked at the material at the end of the core to try to get a preliminary determination of whether the had cored into the bedrock. They began a second core at 7:20 and recovered it at 8:55. By 9:15 we were setting course for the start of the next station. Larry Phillips and crew continued to cut and catalog the two cores that they had taken. Samples from both cores were evaluated under the stereoscope. The cores cut into shorter manageable sections that are then stored in a large walk in freezer on the main deck. Once the ship reaches Seattle, they will be shipped to a storage facility from where researchers can request samples.

Throughout the evening preparations on the cage continued. The splice for the number 3 Bolt gun was completed. Restrictor cables were added to all the Bolt guns. It is possible that this will cause more ice to be caught in the cage, but we are confident that it will prevent much of the damage that has occurred from the guns crashing into the cage when it has rolled in the prop wash.