Life on the Boat

My watchstanding shift begins at the brisk hour of midnight and ends at noon. Needless to say, this takes some getting used to, but I am actually doing better at adjusting then I thought I would. Having breakfast (dinner??) at 11:00 pm is pretty strange (normal dinner time is when I am asleep). So far, my watch duties have consisted of logging the activities that are going on and any problems with the equipment, as well as helping to deploy equipment. Right now, we are in the seismometer deployment phase, so every so often I go out on deck and man a tag line (for stabilization) as they lift the seismometer over the edge and into the blue abyss below. On that note, the color of the water is absolutely beautiful, I've never seen a blue quite like it. It matches my favorite color perfectly, which I had no idea actually existed in nature. It's not a tropical turquoise like you might find around Hawaii or other tropical islands, it's more of a deep steely blue with a hint of green in it, hard to describe without a photo. If you just sit and watch the ocean for a while, it really starts to feel like it's alive, like it's breathing with every swell. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I haven't had a whole lot of free time to just wander and do whatever I want as of yet, most of my off time is spent sleeping (or at least laying in bed). There is down time while on watch, but I generally have to stay in or around the lab area in case I'm needed. This is better for reading a book or something portable rather than exercising or watching movies, etc. I've already finished one book, one of my old favorites, and one of the few books I read in high school that I actually liked. It's called The Killer Angels, a historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg (the movie Gettysburg which is also great, was based on it). It tells the story from the perspective of various generals and commanders on both sides and really puts a human face on the war; many of them were fighting friends and even brothers on the other side, and they all had reasons for fighting beyond the slavery issue. Anyway, the deployment phase is apparently busier than when we are shooting the air guns, so I imagine I will have some more down time in the future. However, I do have work for classes and some data processing type work to do for my advisor, so it looks like I'm going to be staying busy most of the time. The food has been pretty decent so far, although it worries me that the fresh fruit and veggies are already starting to go bad and we're barely two days in. I imagine it's going to get progressively worse as we go. All right, I have to go, to be continued...