The Boat

This post is meant to give some information on the boat that I am on. Some of you may have already seen pictures of the boat and info on this website: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/oma/replacement/shipyard_progress.html
It is owned by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) affiliated with Columbia University, and is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is ~230 ft long and is a converted military ship (details and photos of the conversion process are on the above site). The ship has three main decks loaded with all sorts of equipment and various cranes to move it around: there is a huge ~10 ft diameter sphere on the top deck which gives us our satellite connection, a ~50-60 ft tower in the middle where the whale-watchers (Marine Mammal Observers or MMO's) set up camp, all sorts of winches and spools of cables and ropes for various purposes, and many other things which aren't particularly exciting to mention. I spend most of my time while I am on watch in the main science lab, which is basically an array of ~30 screens and computers monitoring various pieces of equipment and even showing video feeds of various parts of the ship. There are a few computers around that we can use for the internet or various other purposes. The living quarters are quite small as you might expect, mine consists of four small rooms (~5'x8') with two bunks each around a central common room with a couch, a table, and a mini fridge, and two adjacent rooms share a bathroom. Thankfully I have my own room, which is nice. There is a mess hall (dining room) nearby, a movie room with a nice HD flat screen, some couches and a fair number of movies, a library room with some novels and other random books, and a small exercise room with a treadmill, rowing machine, and a few free weights. There are many other labs, equipment rooms, laundry room, and other random rooms around, but those are pretty much the highlights. I have some interior photos, but it's kind of a pain to post them and the connection is a bit slow, but I may get around to posting them here or on my facebook at some point. Despite being a pretty big boat it still pitches and rolls quite noticeably, even in waves that are relatively tame. It hasn't been bad so far, and I think my legs and stomach have mostly adjusted, but I'm really not looking forward to experiencing a storm, which may be as early as tomorrow (1/26 for me). All right, enough about the boat for now, if I think of anything else interesting, I'll post it later...