Day 38 Weekly Update: Stuck between a rock and a hard place

On occasion I've use the phrase before, but never had I had a real sense of the meaning till our present situation.

This is now my 38th day out at sea. We have had an amazing trip so far. We’re now returning home from Dakar, Senegal back to good’ol Rhode Island. The journey has been great in so many ways, fantastic in others, and just insane at a few moments.

Our journey is now in the home stretch. We are finally going home, but now we find ourselves confronted by yet another surprise; not one, not two, but three hurricanes of varying magnitudes! One to the west (Danielle), another to the south-west (Earl), and the last is directly south of our location. The last hasn’t been named yet, but for the purposes of this blog, I will call her Fahvoom.

Going north is not an option from where we are; there is a massive low pressure system, and plus, were not going that route anyways. In so many words, we're boxed-in like Foreman had Ali in Kinshasa, if you see what I’m saying.

We need to go west to get home, and in our path are three hurricanes which no-one here wants to fight with. I think these old-time sailors have lost their ways personally. They’re all crying-n-moaning about our fortunes; I say sail onwards straight through, Rrrrrrrr.

Who cares about getting bounced around a “little” anyways?

These storms are kind of like boxing matches. A brawl here-n-there won’t kill anyone. SO WHAT if were inside a tin can potentially getting our faces smashed into the walls. We’ll fill our stomachs with boiled potatoes and strap ourselves in at night to sleep.

Big deal; if the Titanic can sail across the Atlantic, so can we!The opponent in this match isn’t wearing gloves! But hey, it’s just a little wind; and when did a little wind hurt anyone last? If Dorothy can handle an Oklahoma City tornado and make it to OZ; I certainly think we can do the same!

Side Note: Excerpt from a conversation I had earlier on in the week. Bruce the 2nd Mate says to me “Boats like the Endeavor can handle un-imaginable sea conditions. It’s usually the people in them that can’t handle it. They just can’t hold it together yah cee. They wind-up jumping ship thinking that all is lost. After these boats have been abandoned, they’re usually found right-side-up in great condition!

Stay cool Endeavor, stay cool, ice cold.

In the last 48 hours, a number of different strategies (rumors) have been proposed and several tacks have already been made to avoid the rougher conditions to the north and west. We've slowed from 12 to 9 knots (nautical mile per hour), changed course from a northerly 310 degrees (R.I) to a westerly 270 degrees (V.A), attempting to split in between the two storm systems. Can you imagine that? See picture up above: Grey dot is the R/V Endeavor.


In so many words we're playing cat and mouse with three hurricanes. Danielle is a cat, Earl is cat and the third is just getting stronger as I write. You guessed it, we’re the mouse in this picture folks. We’re trying to cross from Danielle’s eastern front and continue going westward towards Rhode Island. I could have never imagined this kind of scenario playing out; were trying to avoid Danielle while simultaneously trying to dodge Earl who’s leading edge is just south of us. Fahvoom (nameless tropical depression) is immediately behind hurricane Earl and the more we stall, the more Fahvoom closes in on us. The more we avoid Danielle the worst things can potentially get.

On another note; work has continued, but is now much slower than past weeks. I do my rounds on the ship. I monitor the science equipment, the refrigeration units, flow through water system, and the data that we continue to collect (i.e. depth, ADCP, and Meteorological).

The science work has now shifted to other, more passive projects. We continue to filter water in the wet-lab. A second device, we continue to tow behind the ship while we transit. It's called a tow-fish and it looks like a mini torpedo. It's weighs in at about 80 lbs and it's used to stabilize a sampling device which rides along side it.

Our journey back takes us through the Sargasso Sea. This area of the Atlantic is known because of its uniqueness and central location between the continents. In simplistic terms, it’s like a vortex and there isn't much life around. I’m told that all the plastic bottles which we use and throw away, wind up funneling into this area. I’ve had an eye out, but I still haven’t seen any Coca Cola bottles yet.

We’re tasked to collect some of this water for further analysis at MIT. We will also deploy another solo float, which I’ve mentioned in earlier post.

Ship/Cruise Track: http://techserv.gso.uri.edu/EndeavorNow.asp

Day 29: The time in between and then some

We’re on our way back from Africa, the birth place of life. Our work is done and so we have thirteen days of travel to look forward too.

During my off time, I’ve gotten into programming and making my own applications using visual basic express. Visual Basic is a programming language which is used amongst other things to write windows based application. The express package is free and put out by Microsoft to anyone willing to jump into windows programming. I have been dabbling in it, and so far have written my own color changing calculator from the bottom up. It’s pretty simple, it adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides. Bill has been very helpful and encouraging me along the way.

There hasn't been much work to do, except for the occasional launch of a solo float into the ocean. The solo floats, as the name implies, floats in the ocean and records data. The device can record salinity, temperature, and obtain its GPS location and send the data back via satellite. It’s a really cool looking device. It can dive and surface on its own. It uses a ballast tank that enables it to sink and collect data along the entire water column.

The people over at woods whole have given us six of these floats. Throughout trip we have had to drop these off along the way. Deployment is supposed to be a real simple thing, and it usually is. We ask to slow the ship down, drop the solo over the back deck, and say good-bye to it. Finito, it only takes a few minutes

Day 27: Dakar and Moree island in Senegal

The Artist Home:



Selections from Dakar and Moree Island Senegal:

Day: 20 Half way there…

It’s been a long time since I last posted. We are now 20 days in and also twenty days away till we return to Narragansett. Things are settling down a bit and we are finally getting into a rhythm. The routine is usual now, in that there are few surprises. The unfamiliar person may be confused when I say surprise, but on this trip, the last thing we want is a surprise. As far as everybody is concerned, no one wants surprises.

This morning, I un-officially became an expert at reading the echo sounder display for pinger traces. When we send our sampler below, we attach a pinger (beacon) device along for the ride. This is done to monitor our progress towards the Sea floor. The pinger behaves like a strobe in that it transmits a pulse. The pulse is a pressure wave (sound) that we measure to calculate the distance which the package has traveled.


We know the velocity of sound to be 1500 meters per second through water; knowing this fact, the distance can easily be found by dividing velocity by the time it the echo takes to return. It shows up as a linear line graph. It has several lines converging with time. As things get closer the lines intersect, and as the distance between them increases, they diverge. The lines represent the different devices, which we have in the water. In our case, these lines show us the relative locations of the pinger, multi-corer, and the sea floor.

Before I continue, I should explain what it is we’re doing.


Simply said, we’re multi-coring; which is a fancy way of saying that we’re trying to take samples of dirt off the bottom of the ocean.


The device has an arrangement of four tubes along its bottom with legs that stabilize it. When it reaches the bottom, the tubes plunge into the mud and capture the sediment.


It just so happens that we’re doing this at a depth between 3.5 to 5 kilometers (2.8 miles on average) deep. We’re scooping up dirt, and in that dirt we’re looking for “black carbon” which is loosely defined as an in-complete combustion of biomass or a fossil fuel (K.Pohl).

Day 8: Did someone say bad weather?

Today was a tough day. We had rough weather the entire night and for most of the day. My knee-high boots have helped a bit, but fifteen minutes into every day, a big wave bashes the side of the ship and rolls right over our entire operation. It’s been a battle but I will take every precaution to keep my feet dry. It may include jumping like a girl at times, but hey, I got to do what I have to do. I would much rather my boots remain, dry as opposed to turning them into a pair of buckets.
We arrived at station two and positioned the bow into the wind. The waves were still bobbling us around but there was work to be done. The CTD and the water sampling equipment had to be prepped and an additional sensor was put on the cage. It’s capable of measuring the transmission of light in the ocean.


Our work involved taking out an altimeter and replacing it with a PAR (Photo synthetically Active Radiation) sensor. This device measures the intensity of light in the oceans. The unit is paired with an identical sensor that is mounted on the ship to measure the level of sunlight in atmosphere. Thus, when the two sets of data are compared, one can tell the difference and the level of light that penetrate the depths of the oceans.


Our CTD and water sampling cast are always successful. We manage to launch and retrieve the unit without a hitch. The second of our test (the primary reason why we’re here) did not go well today. No sample was recovered.

Day 6: Early in the morning

The entire crew was up and about at 2 am this morning. The ship slowed, and we came to a stop at our first station.The first of our task was to retrieve a tow-fish that is being used to stabilize a passive sampling device. This sampler is being towed all the way from Barbados to Senegal. The ocean segments are 700 nautical miles apart on average. After each segment, we switch out the filters and place the device back into the water.The device is a sandwich of two metal grates (which clamp together) and in-between lay a specially coated plastic film which attracts black carbon. One of the grad students here is studying the impact of black carbon (carbon which is stripped of its organic compounds) and its effects on carbon cycle.Our primary task at each station is to send the multi-corer or grabber (claw) down. We tried for our first sample of the sea floor and it took some time for the grabber to descend. We were 4600 meters above the sea floor and the trick is to send the grabber down as fast as possible without having it trigger before it reaches the ground. The grabber is designed to impact on the ground, Trigger a release and take a scoop out of the ground below. The grabber is heavy and weighs 800 lbs.It took one and a half hours to reach the bottom. We started with a slow descent and maxed out at 60 m/m (meters per minute). It took the same amount of time on the way up, and so the total time for one attempt could be as long as 4 hours. Taking samples at depths of 5000 meters is no laughing matter. On more than one occasion, we have had to re-cast because of device failure.

Day 5: Preparation

All of today was dedicated in preparation for our first stop. Our estimated time of arrival is early tomorrow morning at 3 am. Several things needed doing. The spare CDT cable was finished off with some heat shrink and a final coat of scotch coat sealer; and the communications between the head unit and device was checked.

I was given a tour and complete breakdown of the ships networks. The ship is a maze of network wire with terminals in every corner of the vessel. The ship has two networks, one for general use by the science and ship’s crew. The second and most important is the network for all the science equipment/computers that collect data.

All of the major pieces of equipment talk to one another through his second network. The three GPS (global positioning satellite) systems, ADCP (acoustic Doppler profiler) , CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth), and the meteorological sensors are all tied in on this network. The data is gathered and displayed on several different screens and also recorded for later use.

Today I also completed a second draft of a maintenance manual for the Benthos acoustic pinger. The manual highlights best practices and things to know when working on maintaining the device.

Day 3: Sailing East

The day began very early for me. I stayed up late last night fine tuning our Knudsen echo-sounder. It’s a depth finder that reports back the depth of the sea floor below.

We are traveling at nearly 12 knots and the unit was having problems keeping track and report a reliable depth. Bottom tracking was initially off and the readings would simply jump anywhere from 900 to 4000 meters without cause or reason. The display showed lots of noise, and the data was unreliable. After hours of tweaking with pulse length and ping rate, it seemed to come together nicely. The date was more consistent and the graph showed a nice graph which trends downwards as we headed out of Barbados.

After lunch, I worked on my first wire splicing job. The wiring for the CTD (Conductivity Temperature and Depth) sensor cable needed a new terminal stopper. It’s a simple task, but care was required. The entire process took a couple hours because of the successive coats of super 33+ (expensive electrical) tape and scotch coat. Three coats were laid down, with two hours of drying in between each application. The last step was to cover the area with heat shrink and shrink it with a heat gun.

Later in the afternoon, I started writing a maintenance manual for a Benthos pinger (transducer used as a beacon). This device is clamped onto the winch cable and used to gauge the depth of the package while it descends. The manual will be used by tech to service the pinger and also gives instructions on the proper battery replacement procedures. This device is capable of going 10,000 meters deep, and so it has its particulars that need knowing.

The maintenance procedures are relatively simple but thoroughness is very critical to keep the device operational. I plan one including some photos along with the text. The paper will cover the procedures for replacing O-Rings and batteries on the “Benthos Pinger”.

Later on in the evening, we arrived at our first sampling site. We attached the pinger to the winch line and sent it down with the multi-corer. The pinger uses sound as the method by which we track it. It pings at one hertz and the soundings (waves) register on our screens as a line or a trace that can be tracked down to the sea floor. This will give us the location of the pinger in the water column while it descends to the bottom of the ocean.

Day 2: Getting Exciting

Things will be moving fast today. We start the day at 7:30 with breakfast. The boat crew is busy finalizing and double checking everything before we disembark at 9. Everything is strapped down on the back deck and most of the science crew is out there watching.

We’re headed towards AFRICA, and it’s going to be a long trip (6 weeks in all).

Before we leave, I hurry up to snap a picture of the Endeavor. This is the last we see of Barbados, and for that matter, land!

Time isn’t wasted. One hour into our voyage, we go into safety drill video. We watch a 20 minute video, find our muster stations, and jump into a survival suit (just imagine what you would look like dressed as Gumby).

Soon afterwards, my mentor (Bill Fanning) and I overview the ships computer systems and data collection methods. Data collection is the objective of every trip, and technicians are the people who collect it and back it up!

I get a quick run-down of the sensors onboard. The ADCP (Acoustics Doppler Current Profiler), meteorological (barometric, wind speed, temperature) and the surface salinity computer systems. In the second photo, you’ll notice the array of computer screens in the main lab. This is headquarters and it’s Impressive!

Day 1: Travel…

I tell myself to pack in advance, but no matter how many times I repeat this piece of advice, it always seems to pass me by. Its super important you would think, but hey, who doesn’t like the thrill of packing within an hour of leaving home. I don’t recommend this to everyone; as the saying goes, different ship, different long splices.

Note to traveler: Don’t overlook the importance of personal care products. If you ever plan on traveling half-way around the world, you’ll soon learn that toothpaste, soap, deodorant, and a pair of clippers are essential. Six weeks without a hair cut might just leave you looking like, and potentially smelling like a caveman.

Beware; being stuck on a boat without the proper provisions could your ticket into the next Geico commercial. Do yourself a favor and leave last minute packing to the experts!

Be prepared for a long day of traveling. In my case, my flights were very early, and so I arrived at the airport at 12 am for a 530 am flight. As you can see in the picture, the place is crawling with people.

Traveling to Barbados is great on JetBlue. The pilots switched to after-burners soon after take-off and made the long trip, in a snappy 5 hours.

If you get the opportunity, sleep through these long flights. Skip out on the delicious meals you’re not offered and the many servings of High fructose corn syrup (juice).

On arrival in Barbados I decided to be brave. I jumped out of the airport and out with the people. I found everyone to be friendly. I’m a “getting to know the real people” kind of traveler. After a hot plate of stuffed chicken and rice I headed for the local bus stop. I did some reading, and it seemed simple enough to catch the bus into town.

I was on foot and made my way towards the “bus hut”. Unknowingly, I overpaid the bus fare. I found out quickly that what I paid for was an hour roller coaster ride going to Bridgetown.

Big buses, lots of people and sharp curves make for a great experience on the Bayesian roads. In my opinion, it was the best bang for my 1/4 buck and totally worth the price of admission.