Slight delay in plans, as of tonight. The plan was to board the ship this morning, get it loaded with cargo throughout the day, and set off to the north in the evening. Now the plan is to set out tomorrow morning first thing. There is an unbelievable amount of equipment to get on this ship, and once it’s done, we’ll be on our way. To give you a sense of a heavy-lifting involved…
The ship’s winch, which is a spool of steel cable used to deploy instruments into the water (you can see my shadow in the picture for scale)One of our scientists next to our own winch, to be hoisted onto the ship with the crane behind him. This winch is wound with Kevlar cable.The yellow balls are the upper floatation for the mooring lines. The small ones weigh 100-150 pounds, and they stay just below the surface when a mooring is placed down into the water (a mooring is a way to secure the ship to a location while at sea.
Thank you so much for the great updates!