Day Off!!! (Kinda)

MFT: Lazing, reading, & swimming
LFP: The day ending

Hallo, so today I took my first day off (mostly) since I’ve begun this blog/fieldwork experience back in mid January (Jan. 12th). I stayed on the boat while all the students went ashore. I had already gathered all the sediment data from the accessible areas on the island. So I spent the day on the boat cleaning my gear, drying my samples, repackaging all of them, and storing things. It was pretty amazing however, because honestly it doesn’t take a full day to do those things.

I spent the morning sleeping for an extra two hours because I only got about 5.5 hours last night (I had watch for 2 hours). While I was sleeping all the young school kids (6-8 years olds) from the dance last night came on board to see the boat. It meant that I woke up to very high pitched french & Marquesan language being spoken right outside my bunk. Some of the kids even pulled back my curtain (to see what was inside) and were shocked and amused by my sleepily asking them how they were doing. It was very cute overall. However, I didn’t have to deal with them :).

Anyways, once the tours were done I started cleaning my equipment and making sure my samples were drying properly. It’s amazing how dirty everything gets when you are gather sand samples! I even managed to read a book and sunbathe a bit. Right before lunch we (the crew on watch, all 3 of them) went for a swim off the boat (my 3rd swim so far since I’ve been with SEA!). It was fun jumping off the rails into the water (about a 15 ft jump, so respectable). Then I got a nice saltwater shower (nice to have clean hair again). It was a great afternoon just lying on deck and drying off while reading Georgette Heyer and Terry Pratchett (not at the same time of course). Honestly the worst part was that the day ended! But it ended with a gorgeous sunset where I actually saw the sun turn green! I mean it wasn’t a “green flash” but it was definitely green! Apparently this was also seen last night by multiple people. It was very pretty nevertheless.


Tonight we are sailing 30 nm to Fatu Hiva the most Southern of the Marquesas Islands and our last stop in the area. After Fatu Hiva we get to sail to Mangareva over 6 days (gulp!). I’ve really been enjoying land time so I’m not looking forward to it ending so soon! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hopper Last

Image
So we made Hopper hop....well sorta! We built a bottom for hopper's body by adding 6 puzzle pieces! Lots of fun making puzzle pieces that fit together in a tight fit. Then we have a small tail piece of foam that helps with the balance and the hop of hopper. We got in the long axel and put it in for the double axle of the engine. Unfortunately we picked up the extra long one which messed up our balance and looked REALLY strange. So instead we decided to use the shorter 100 mm axle (not the 150). But at this point our engine started acting up! So after an hour and a half of fiddling with the engine, we got it to stop making weird noises when it ran. We also decided to do some soddering. We soddered the batteries with the engine and added an on/off switch. Lot's of fun soddering again. After all of this our hopper is mostly working. I've shown you tons of pictures so here are the two new ones from friday: This is hopper with the 150 mm axle -- doesn't it look weird! yo...
Read more

Thermal Work - Matlab -- Write up

So I worked with Jeff on the matlab thermal work, since I had missed a fair amount during thesis time. WE managed to finish up everything. Umm ok here goes: So I worked up the part 1 of the thermal challenge in class with Robbie. The cooling and heating of coffee was really easy. But hey, I've done tons and TONS of matlab coding this semester (aka > 200 pages of matlab codes). Any who, what happens with bang bang is lots of oscillation for the control, aka the temperature of the coffee oscillates around the desired temperature. When you code in proportional control, you have trouble reaching the desired temperature. Instead the coffee tends to be right below the desired temperature and never quite reaches the desired temp. I guess Starbucks can't use proportional control then! It is quite fun to add in a time delay for the proportional control and bang-bang control. With bang-bang you see a fair amount of overshoot. You see some overshoot with proportional control too. a...
Read more

Hopper Finale

Image
He works! It's crazy soooo crazy :). Here are some pictures from hopper finale. We did all of the sodering and used the smaller 100 cm axle. We also got the alignment correct between the two legs. And he hops!!!! There is a movie I have, so please email me if you want to see it :). I don't know how to post it here so yea. We decided not to redo any parts as he works pretty solidly! There was one idea to make the big rabbit legs a tad bit smaller so that they rotate completely freely without touching the floor surface when he is hopping, but the weighting of the legs with screws really means that this isn't an issue! I think hopper is adorable and my partner is brilliant. I am good with solidworks and printing but she is good with lots of everything else!
Read more