First full day on the water

MFT: Taking the Helm

LFP: Not enough sleep

Hallo, so today we had our first real watch and first full day on the ocean. Our day started pretty early because we had mid-watch. We started watch at 23:00 (11 pm) last night and then stayed on watch for four hours until 03:00. Then we went to sleep. I took a sea-sickness pill just in case. The problem as I suspected was that even though the medicine was “not sleepy” it fully drugged me out. I almost had to crawl to the bathroom at like 5 am because I was so drugged feeling. I awoke at 10:00 am needing to do work but not fully awake. As even more problematic, but suspected, the meds stayed with me till about noon. So I was basically out of it all morning. Plus 6 hours of sleep was nowhere near enough (though apparently the best I’m going to get).

We had afternoon watch starting at 13:00 and that went pretty well. We were still under sail and had added motor. Then we had class from 14:30 – 16:00. Most of class was spent talking about Tahiti culture and life. But we also covered slightly the upcoming shore work on Fakarava. I’ve got to say how glad I am NOT to be a college student on board right now. They have to be writing various papers and have homework. I mean I have lots to do what with paper edits and my field work planning/troubleshooting/etc. I’m hoping things calm down once we are on land again because I need time and sleep to focus on my fieldwork (the purpose of this trip).

Anyways, afternoon watch lasted until dinner and then we got galley cleanup. The way watches work is that every 24 hours you are on for 10 hours of watch time. Unfortunately when you get afternoon watch (1300 – 1700) you get galley cleanup after dinner, which lasts at least 30-45 minutes. Plus you then get dawn watch (0300-0700) and dawn clean up (cleaning the whole interior of the boat) after breakfast (another 45 mins at least). So you get stuck with a lot of cleaning duties on very little sleep. Plus since it’s now fully daytime it can be harder to get a nap in (at least for me).

Cool thing was I have learned how to plot our position on the chart and do most of the deck jobs. We are slowly learning the relative orientation that SEA uses (instead of saying whale sighted at 3:00 we would say whale off the starboard beam). We have to finish a checklist of various things before we are allowed to climb the rigging (climb up the masts). It’s been a long day but doubtless tomorrow will be longer with dawn watch and then getting into port. I also finally managed to meet up with the powers that be on the boat (our captain, Colleen, the chief scientist, Jan, and the local scientist, Mahoono). We were able to talk in depth about my proposed field work for Fakarava. It was really useful to talk together given that the last time I talked over the itinerary was back in October 2013! A lot has changed since then not the least of which is learning where/how my data collection works best. It looks like I’ll renting a car or scooter or bike (last resort) to GPR/GPS the main motu of Fakarava since all the other motu are incredibly vegetated. There will also be a tour of the lagoon I can do with the students that gets me to a couple of different motu around the atoll. Fingers crossed all will work out!