Happy Solstice! The sun has been spending less and less time in the sky recently; setting earlier and rising later as the Earth’s orbit tips the axis away from the sun.

So many feelings to feel.
So many thoughts to think.
So many experiences to process.

Today all started with our friendly local engineer waking me up an 0600 to stand anchor watch with a couple of my watchmates.

This morning, instead of receiving the regular sort of wakeup relaying time, weather outside, and finishing off with Are you awake?

What an incredible past two days it has been on the Robert C. Seamans! We’ve had a lovely change of pace being anchored for the last two nights in Kealakekua Bay. While at anchor, our evening watch schedule is quite different; we stand hour-long watches in pairs rather than the normal six-hour watch with your entire watch. Needless to say, everyone was very thankful to get a full night’s rest.  For me, our time in the bay was the perfect way to celebrate our Pacific crossing. We also had two birthdays to celebrate – our 1st scientist Emily and chief engineer Nate! The galley team really brought their A game by cooking cheesecake and rainbow muffins for us all.

For the duration of our cruise we have performed science deployments twice a day, every day.

Hello Friends,

Land Ho!!!  I didn’t hear the shout in the pre-dawn hours of the morning, but there she was when I came up on deck.

Even though I’m unexpectedly filling in for this blog post I feel like I know what to say and how to say it.

As we approach Hawai’i (only about 250 nautical miles from the Big Island at the moment), we reach the time when we stop gathering data and start analyzing data. Our twice-a-day habit of heaving to and dunking nets in the water comes to an end (more or less) tomorrow. Instead, all of us students now need to take the vast amounts of data we’ve collected and sift, sort, and stare at it until we come up with some answers to those questions we posed way back on land.

Reading each of the previous blogs has been a really fun way to keep up with all of the hip happenings on the ship. It has also made me quite eager to share some about what goes on in the corner of the boat that I spend 90% of my time: the galley! The galley is my favorite spot on the ship and it has been a great place to get to know everyone aboard.