On the open seas

Hey all. Sorry for the long silence but I have been super busy. The last 2 days were very hectic. Some of our equipment was damaged in transit to the boat. So we had to do some last minute repairs. I worked for about 17 hours yesterday, hauling very heavy items up 3 decks. I only had maybe 4 hours of sleep last night so I am pretty exhausted. Getting a lot of exercise though with all of the stairs. We have been in Dutch Harbor since Saturday. I spent the night in the only hotel on the island Saturday night and the rest of the time I have stayed on the ship. Much of my time was spent setting equipment up yesterday. The day before that I was running back and forth into town looking for parts. Dutch Harbor is a fishing village, in a way, but they now have a Safeway. They have a teeny, tiny airport, the hotel and a couple of restaurants and bars. Not exactly somewhere I would want to live. Lots of bald eagles, although I didn't get any pictures of them! Very pretty, but it is isolated. And it is a bit cold. It rained a bit yesterday and there was a very pretty rainbow but I think I was to angry to enjoy it. Joaquin and I were tasked with hauling very heavy boxes up a tiny ladder onto a small boat, which will be used to deploy a couple of our instruments. We recruited some help and it went well. There are some very nice scientists on this boat. It is great when we can all work together to help each other out. A little kumbayah moment.

So far this things have not gone entirely smoothly. There are always hiccups, nothing every goes perfectly. but I don't usually have many things happen at one time. Hopefully things will improve. We have a couple of days transit until the first station. That time will be spent getting my sea legs. We shoved of this morning at 8am Alaskan time. I can already fell the rocking motion. So I am going to sign off before I get sick. Pictures will be coming as soon as I figure out the best way to upload them.