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Daily Journal Entries : Judy | Paquita
Cool Lasers and Cloud Chasing
I went outside to take pictures of clouds and wandered into the lidar trailer this morning as well. Sara and Janet were hard at work monitoring the incoming data, and maintaining the lidar. Sara led me into the back of the trailer to show me the actual laser. "Lidar" stands for light detection and ranging. The trailer the lidar is in just looks like a giant metal boxcar, (but smaller). It’s like a little office, and it can be lifted whole from the ship with a crane. I asked Sara if she would let me videotape her explanation of the lidar and she agreed to do this at a later time.
I went up to the bridge to talk with Captain Ralph. The day before about 13 pictures refused to be downloaded on my computer, so I was going to pester him again. I also asked him to teach me the terms of the ship. If you are facing the front of the ship it’s the "Bow" and the left side is "Port". The back of the ship is the "Stern" and the right side is "Starboard". A good way to remember this is: Port has four letters and left has four letters. I interviewed the Captain and I have this on tape.
After taking a few pictures, Paquita joined us on the bridge. She and Captain looked at the radar screen and there was a nice band of precipitating clouds not far from us and she was really interested in getting closer. With a little good-natured grumbling, he agreed to turn about. He said to Paquita "If we run out of gas on this ship, you and Judy can jump in and I’ll throw you a line so you can pull us!" My reply to that was: "Oh no way, that would be like two gnats trying to pull an elephant." The Captain went on to say that actually, something like that is possible on the water. A friend of his had a pretty large sailboat that ran into engine trouble, and he threw a rowboat over the side attaching a line to the disabled boat and literally rowed his bigger boat to shore!
During the Captains’ story something caught my eye and I saw a small fish jump out of the water and two little white wings expanded and it sailed over the water for just an instant, then it dove back down into the water. I broke into the conversation and exclaimed "I just saw a flying fish!" and Captain replied "There are no flying fish, they are just fish that jump horizontally over the water, fish don’t FLY!" Yes sir, Captain, no argument there! (He’s a really funny guy!)
Safety at Sea
We’ve had one safety meeting, a video screening and discussion about it afterwards. I talked with Captain Ralph about what it meant to "muster" in the case of an emergency. Muster just means to gather and wait for instructions, primarily to just stay together. In the case of a fire on the ship, or other emergency when it’s called for all hands must be accounted for. We are instructed to gather at the back of the boat. There are more than enough immersion suits on board, as well as rafts. The rafts must have more than enough space for everyone on board in case one of them doesn’t deploy. The immersion suits protect against hypothermia. Yes, people get hypothermia in the tropics. Even a moderate drop in temperature (due to the vastness of the ocean) the human system cannot compensate for the loss of body heat. The immersion suit keeps a person dry, and therefore warmer than surrounding water. If water comes into the suit, it gets warmed up by the body. These things keep the core body temperature at a safe range.
We had a safety drill tonight and I tried on the immersion suit. It was made of thick red rubbery-spongy material. It had a tube you blow into to fill up a bladder that’s on the back of the suit. This air-filled bladder acts as a floatation device, but the whole thing floats even if you don’t blow it up right away! It is also equipped with alight that should only be turned on a night.
Following the drill, there was a video about harbor safety. I discovered there are real modern day pirates to deal with. When the ship lost an engine, they were close to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. If the ship had gone to port at either of these places there would be customs issues to deal with, but also the ship would have to have extra inspections when it returned to Ft. Pierce. They sailed on a little further to Puerto Rico, at Bahia De Boqueron and had a 3-day rest stop. They had radioed ahead to order the part, and they took a brief holiday while the engine was getting repaired.
- Judy
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Convective cell sampled near the coast of Barbuda
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