Well hello there. Over the next three months I'm going to be going from Japan to Australia and New Zealand... via 2 months spent on a big boat in the North Pacific. I'm part of the scientific team for IODP Expedition 324, which aims to sample deep basement rocks from a giant underwater volcanic-plateau called 'Shatsky Rise'. Should you be interested, you can follow what I'm up to here...

Wednesday 9 September 2009

The motion of the ocean


Dear God I feel awful. 
I guess I didn’t really anticipate being a jolly little sailor after my experience on the Black Sea several years ago (five hours on a yacht in the calmest conditions imaginable, and I still yacked for four hours straight), but this is ridiculous.
The ship is in perpetual motion, which sounds obvious enough (we’re at sea duh), but until you actually experience ocean motion it’s actually very hard to imagine. It’s like being on a mild rollercoaster that never ends, even at night-time when you’re trying to sleep. It wouldn’t be so bad if the motion was purely up-down or side to side, but it’s this really gross combination that produces a kind of rolling sensation.
In short: bloody awful.
I’ve felt downright terrible ever since we left Yokohama port at 10am yesterday. The first exciting hour after we set off was fine. We were all on the top deck above the Bridge, taking photos and watching the Japanese coastline slip further and further behind us as we negotiated our way out of Tokyo Bay.  
I wore my “I’m on a boat” t-shirt to much amusement (mostly mine I have to say) and got the obligatory leaving-port shot from the deck:


I was even confident (read: stupid) enough to have a fairly hearty lunch at 12pm. What’s all this nonsense about seasickness? I thought to myself.  Maybe I’ll be fine?
Well, I sure remembered what all that nonsense was about at 2pm, when I had to run out of an important science meeting to the nearest bathroom (two decks below, urgh). After that I pretty much went to bed until 7am this morning.  The lovely onboard doctor came and gave me a box of the strongest motion sickness drugs he had, and now (11.30am the next day) I’m starting to feel a little bit more normal.  Eating some sort of meal will definitely be the acid test though…

Anyway, debilitating sickness aside, everything is going well!
We are underway to our first drilling site at the northern end of Shatsky Rise, where hopefully we should arrive sometime on the 14th or 15th of September. We have finally got our satellite uplink internet up and running after 5 days of it being down (hence no blog posts until today), so I’m feeling a little more connected to the wider world.  Phew.
So for the next few days I’m going to be concentrating on things in this order:
1)    Don’t be sick.
2)    Especially don’t be sick during science meetings.
3)    Try and eat something. Anything.
4)    Sleep a lot
5)    Start getting ready to describe the first core, and familiarise myself with the database software (thrilling stuff).
6)    Get on shift, which I’ll talk about in more detail later on.

Right now, it’s time for life boat drills…
x

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