By Haley Peczon

Robotics Engineering Graduate from UC Santa Cruz

 

First breakfast on the ship today! Got fueled up and ready for the adventures of the day 🙂

Agenda item one is the abandon ship muster. We gathered in the main lab room, practicing the safety demonstrations we got yesterday. One of the most memorable moments was seeing us all transform into lobsters as we put on our bright red orange immersion suits with gloves that looked like a claw!

After all the fun and excitement of practicing safety drills, we settled down for a quick lesson on how to use ratcheting straps and got to work on securing loose cargo in preparation for our departure scheduled at noon! It’s been so awesome how quickly we were able to work as a team. I’ve only known everyone for a little more than 24 hours now but we’re already growing to be good friends and teammates 🙂

We got a little bit of free time in which me and Kyle explored land (the docks) for one final time before setting sail where we saw some dolphins training and big navy ships passing.

Everyone gathered at the bow of the ship as our last connections to land were released and we were officially on our way to Alaska!! It was such a wonderful moment to experience. The adventure begins! (Even though really I feel like it already had)

Something interesting I learned as we were leaving was that there was a pilot captain steering us out of the harbor actually and sure enough as we approached the mouth, the pilot boat came to pick up our guide and we were off on our own.

After that we got back together for our group meetings where we did some work on our laptops configuring our Network map so that we could easily share data without compromising our bandwidth.

With the rocking of the ship it felt like being rocked like a baby in a cradle so a lot of us felt sleepy and we decided to cut our meetings short in order to lounge and adjust to our new movement. I took a cat nap in the movie room for a few minutes before checking out the ships library where I picked up an Underwater Robotics textbook and learned more about RV Alvin who is on board with us right now!! I am such a huge fan and still can’t believe this incredible opportunity to work so closely and meet all the amazing people who work on board. It’s truly been such a blessing and it’s only Day 2!

Once we were far enough out of earshot from the fancy San Diego homes, we were able to test the emergency alarm systems and mustered again in the main lab room.

Ajit showed a group of us his work studying plankton in one of the lab rooms and demonstrated how to use some of the equipment necessary to extract data from the specimens we are soon to collect! It was so cool to see the different aspects of stem coming together in order to make these discoveries possible and I am incredibly grateful to be a part of this experience!