Cabin Fever

On Thursday, we hit the halfway point. We had been at sea for 14 days and we still have 14 days left to go. A few days ago, I was starting to catch a bad case of cabin fever, and I think most other people on the boat caught it as well. It’s just been a long time on a small boat. I love it here, but sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. You know me, I like to run around and climb trees and do crazy stuff. There is very little room to run on this boat and so far, I have not seen any trees. Being cooped up on a boat was starting to get to me. “Was” being the opportune word in that last sentence.

Since then, the days have started to go by faster because everyone is trying to do lots of fun things. Staying busy serves two purposes: 1. It keeps everyone from going crazy and 2. It allows us to have awesome bonding time. For example, late afternoon/nights spent in the lounge are becoming much more fun and slightly outrageous. A few nights ago, we all got tattoos. Someone had brought a packet of all sorts of temporary tattoos, from tribal symbols to super heroes to Frieda Kahlo. We drew names from a hat and we each picked out a tattoo AND the location of the tattoo for our partner. I love my tattoo. It's a big ole' tribal tattoo right on my neck. Awesome! I feel like it matches my personality! The next night, we each grabbed a piece of paper and drew a portrait of someone with our non-dominant hand. Each person hung up their drawing at their lab bench. I don’t know who comes up with these games, but they are the perfect cure to cabin fever. 

Last night, we watched the WORST movie imaginable on a boat… Titanic. Before going to bed last night, we checked the water temperature to assure ourselves that the water is much warmer than what Jack and Rose had to deal with. Furthermore, we have enough lifeboats and we are well out of iceberg range! Of course, long before we watched the movie, we had to take Titanic pictures on the bow. I believe this picture is from the second day out at sea!

Another interesting event of the last few days was that we deployed our last ARGO float. ARGO floats are autonomous floats that oceanographers deploy in the ocean all over the world. They can be programmed to sink to a certain depth and then rise back to the surface. They repeat this action over and over again for about 5 years, while being monitored remotely by NOAA. We brought seven ARGO floats to deploy over the course of the cruise and we just release the last of them. Before it was released, we had a chance to doodle on it. We created an underwater world full of crabs, whales, mermaids, fish, and SCUBA divers on the outer casing of the float. We added “DUKE” to the float as well (making sure it was larger than the University of Tennessee symbol).

The one thing I don’t understand about the Pacific is the weather. On 80’s day, the weather was absolutely perfect but by the next morning, it was rocking and rolling so badly that the noon cast was cancelled. This morning I woke up and helped bring the rosette back to the deck. This is the first time I have done this when it was still dark outside. Recovering the cast is much harder than deploying it. On its way out of the ocean, you have to use all of your muscles to tug it back into position aboard the ship. I was barely strong enough to do it. Usually, they don’t let me help because it’s too rough. However, this morning, the water was perfectly calm. I took a nap after filtering and by the time I woke up, we were in storm conditions again! I can never tell what tomorrow, or even the next how will hold!

The sunrise yesterday morning