Daily Journal

July 9, 2010

By David M. Lawrence

Greetings to our friends on the M/V Maersk Constellation.

The Constellation was one of two ships that passed close to us this afternoon – on third mate Jeremy Dann's watch. (He's the only watch officer who has been graced with such close visits on this expedition.) Both were on collision courses, both we asked to change course slightly to avoid us. Both did.

But the Constellation was the highlight of our day. One of the ship's mates told us by radio that they were checking us out on the Internet. They turned a bit to starboard to pass us astern, and crew of both ships apparently spent a lot of time looking, and taking pictures, of their nearest neighbors.

Our captain, Chris McGuire, had another radio chat with the Constellation as it passed us. The ship had been in the Mediterranean, with stops in Israel and Spain, and was now making way to the Gulf of Mexico to pick up and deliver U.S. Agency for International Development food aid to Benin in West Africa, and Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa.

So guys, if you check our Web site again, fair winds and following seas.

We have had a lot of other excitement today. The past few days we've had a frenzy of decorating styrofoam cups. The reason: Today, we were going to send those cups over the side, down well below the surface, and bring them back up again. This has become something of an oceanographic tradition. Whether by attaching a bag of styrofoam material to a submersible, like Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's legendary DSV Alvin, or to a line attached to some instrument lowered from the surface, we get to test the effects of the sea's tremendous pressure at depth on ordinary objects.

While the activity in our case may seem silly, it was coupled to a much more serious purpose – maintenance of our hydrowire, a key factor in many of our instrument deployments. As much wire as possible needs to be let out so that the wire can be coated with a fish oil based coating. This extends the life of the steel wire that lives outside, continuously exposed to the corrosive ocean environment.

Members of A Watch payed out 2,000 meters of wire. The end of the line made it only 1,892 meters deep (because of the influence of subsurface currents), but the decorated styrofoam head and cups came back looking like the shriveled faces carved out of old apples I used to see on family vacations to Arkansas.

Today we had another man overboard drill. It is important to have such safety drills – it gives us the chance to make mistakes in a relatively safe setting, while preparing us (we hope) to respond instinctively and correctly in the case of an actual emergency.

In my case, I made a bit of a mistake today. I saw the man – actually a black float – go overboard. Instead of maintaining eye contact until relieved by a lookout on C Watch, I went to my emergency muster station to prepare to adjust our sails. If I had been the only one to see the "man" go overboard, my well-intentioned mistake could have dire consequences.

Now I know – but I continue to hope I will never have to use that knowledge.

Early this morning we made our final turn to the northwest. We are motor-sailing straight toward Bermuda now. No more zigzags, though we will continue sampling for plastics as we go. Many of my shipmates are conflicted right now – they are simultaneously eager for the expedition to end, but regretting the fact that it is ending so soon all at the same time.

I can relate.