64PE366 - Day 1

Packing, loading and unpacking all sorts of equipment doesn’t seem to be too challenging. But only if you are helping out and someone else does the logistic and precise planning. As an unexperienced master student on my first cruise I was super surprised that everything went very smoothly and without major complications – thanks to those who did a great job organizing everything prior to boarding the ship. So, that was done very quickly and we could leave the NIOZ harbor heading north to our first station for the next and first morning of that cruise. On board, life is quite good and convenient. Sleeping less than one minute away from my work place even beats the 10 min walk from the Potvis lodging building to my work place at NIOZ-TX (probably because there are no 50 km of corridors on board of the ship). Crew and scientists are in a good mood, healthy (no one is really seasick) and very friendly, which creates a nice atmosphere on board. Food is better than when I cook for myself which I don’t mind. Ten days of good food can’t be too bad.

The next (first) morning, the actual work began for everyone. The boat was busy and the first CTD brought turbit water. The water at the coastal station next to the lovely beach of Terschelling was heavily loaded with particles and clogged our filters (The view on Terschellling’s snowy sand dunes is very beautiful though). Nevertheless, work continued and everyone still seemed to be in a good mood. Working on board is really exciting due to challenges with climate and wave action. Containers are cooled down to 3 degrees and the ship is moving. No problem(!), could be worse as my experienced supervisor pointed out, the sea was comparatively calm. I was glad that we had a calm day, very handy to re-learn basic skills like pouring water from a big water bottle into a small one. I thought I was an expert in doing that after about two decades of water pouring experience… I was glad I had time to practice under these conditions. Also funny was, is and will be, climbing through the door opening and closing doors that hang about roughly half a meter high. You open the door, lift your left leg as high as it gets and then the movement stops. Under normal conditions absolutely no challenge. Here on the moving ship you think you do all the necessary movements, but in fact you are standing still. During your second attempt to enter you are using more kinetic energy. In most cases the timing is bad and the ship is going down at the same time giving you an extra boost and you feel like flying inside – awesome!

All in all, it has been a great experience so far and I am very much looking forward to the rest of the trip. Tim Piel, MSc-student