Pinrail Chase!

MFT: Yummy food, gorgeous weather, and a fun activity

LFP: Too much work to do!

So today was our Olympics. Ok so maybe not the olympics, maybe only a pintail chase. Basically the staff/crew tested our knowledge of all the lines on the boat. For every given sail (we have 9) there are at least 4 lines: the halyard, the downhaul, the outhaul, and the sheet. A number of them also have Clewl’n and jiggers. Plus there maybe more than one sheet (one on each side of the boat). All in all there are a TON of different ropes (lines) all over the boat and we have to learn them all. So today we had our quiz. Basically we were divided into our watch and got to do a relay race. You would be given a card with the name of a line and we had to then go find it and identify the line for a crew member. Then we came back and the next person in our watch could go on with a new line. The watch was allowed to help their members identify lines by shouting cold or hot (if they were close or far from the line in question) but that was it. It was rather hilarious. There we were today, all 21 students standing in 3 groups of seven yelling out things like: frozen, spicy, scorching, ect. It was a real fun way to test our knowledge. There were also a couple of joke cards for example one card asked someone to find a “pickup line”…. Taylor said “You looking fine tonight…”. Or a tan line — which promptly led Jerusha to pull aside Dominique’s shirt and shout loudly “tan line” (Dominique is rather fair and has been sunburned). It ended with us being given “conga line” at which point the entire watch did the conga line around the boat. The staff got into it by periodically drenching us with the salt water hose and if we were caught running making us crab walk back to the line. My watch, B watch, came in a close second so we had fun all around.

This morning we had morning watch and it was BUSY. We had two different deployments during watch. We deployed a CTD carousel (it collects water and other information from various depths) and a Neuston Plankton Net tow (collecting plankton at the surface). The carousel was fun to deploy as we got to use an electric winch (which I ran) and go all the way out to 600 m depth. Then we had to collect the water samples for different analysis (Chlorophyl a analysis, ph, phosphates, ect.).

We only have another 200 nm left to get to Nuku Hiva. Nuku Hiva will be pretty different than the other atolls because the Marquesas are all volcanic emergent islands. So nice high peaks with very little coral reef around them. Think Hawaii (like the big island). Supposedly we get to do a hike the first day. Then I’ll be off collecting data for Taylor Perron. I hope everyone is enjoying this blog. To be honest things at sea tend to get into a bit of a rhythm and things don’t change all that much day to day. But today for instance, now that I am no longer seasick, I got to sit and read a book! Ok it wasn’t a purely for fun book, but still! Since I’m no longer sleeping the entire day away whenever I’m not on watch, cleaning, or eating, I have a bit more time to do things. This is really good because there are plenty of things I’m supposed to be doing. Anyways, one of the professors on the boat, Mary Malloy wrote a book that she leant to me after our mutual appreciation of Jane Austen and other British literary. Here’s to a quick arrival on Nuku Hiva. Hopefully I’ll have more exciting things to write about soon!

PS Happy Delayed Birthday Britt!