I left my heart... in San Fran-Zealand...

Goodbye New Zealand, you were awesome.
Be seeing you again soon I'm sure.

This week I have mostly been...

. Throwing myself on the Australian docks and kissing the dusty concrete like Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves when he got to Dover after the Crusades.
. Enjoying my first beer (and my second beer, and my third beer, and my...) for 2 months. (Sorry liver, you thought I'd grown up there for a minute didn't you?)
. Dancing like a teenager at a full-moon-party on a tropical beach.
. Getting up-close and personal with the Australian wildlife...



. Letting the Australian wildlife get a little too up-close and personal with me...



. Not getting a tan.
. Experiencing feelings of sadness, shortly followed by resignation, about the fact that I didn't get a tan. And probably never will.
. Being too hot.
. Flying to New Zealand and being too bloody cold. 9C plus windchill are you kidding me?
. Deciding to go even further south to see penguins and seals tomorrow despite being almost too cold... to.. type.
. Seeing more spiders in 6 minutes in NZ than i did in 5 days in Oz and being a bit confused about that.
. Not calling any of my relatives despite numerous promises to the contrary. Sorry guys. I'm fine. Speak soon x

Astronaut vs Samurai

It's the celebrity death match of the year.

East vs West
Past vs Future
Cardboard Vs Foam

Who will wins this battle of the titans?
Fiiiiiight!




Astronaut is winner!

A dirty Pollywog no more

Avast ye landlubbers!

We be sailing past the first land, us salty shellbacks have clapped our weary eyes upon for many a month.

Pinipel and Barahun off the port side, with New Britain, that tropical beauty most rare, off the starboard bow!





I did indeed espy a lone salty coconut floating past this fine ship this very morn, perchance a wee umbrella and yella straw protruding from its hairy side.
A pina colada I did crave.

Townsville, that most salubrious and welcoming of ports, does await us within the week...
We be hoping they be keeping their beer cold and their menfolk hot, in anticipation of this great vessel's imminent arrival. Onwards, to Townsville!

Meet you in the middle

On a slightly less high-brow philosophical note; we're about to cross the equator and I'm really starting to wish I wasn't a lowly Pollywog...

By way of explanation, over the last week or so posters have started to appear in the hallways with overtones which range from the jovial:


(Our esteemed (and usually very pleasant and genial) captain pictured to the left

to the downright sinister:



Apparently it's a big deal crossing the equator at sea for the first time, and there seems to be this whole horrific initiation thing-doubtless inherited from old naval traditions- planned for Wednesday, where all the newbies are made to "pay due homage to King Neptune".
::Gulp::
Until you cross you're known as a (lowly, pathetic, useless, squirming etc etc) "Pollywog", before hopefully being accepted into the order of the (mighty, all powerful, worshipful) "Shellbacks", after your ordeal.

Seriously guys, when you're at sea you've gotta amuse yourself somehow!

This is a pretty big event-week actually. We've got crossing day on Wednesday and Hallowe'en on Sunday, which is also incidentally Julie's 30th birthday.
Some of the yanks have been thinking about their costumes for months. I'm taking the more British approach of hmm-what-have-i-got-in-my-wardrobe-that's-clean-hmm-nothing-ok-i'll-just-wrap-myself-in-tin-foil-and-go-as-a-baked-potato-then.

So, yeah anyway, could get messy.

See you on the other side...

x

p.s. I've made it pretty clear that If anyone so much as looks at my hair with a sideways glance and a pair of clippers, I'll be throwing the first punch. Hopefully this has not drawn undue attention to me which..would...be......bad........oh dear...

A thousand million twinkling lights

You’ve never seen stars like it.
I’ve never seen stars like it.
It’s breathtaking.




We switched off most of the lights onboard for the transit, plunging the boat into inky blackness at night for the first time.
The whole sky from unseen watery horizon to horizon was a black sphere, stretching up infinitely into the cosmos, peppered with the glowing orbs of the brightest stars.
At first, just the familiar ones you occasionally see through the orange-stain of the city back home; The Plough, Orion’s belt, Cassiopeia and so on. But as your eyes adjust to the gloom and you stare ever deeper into the blackness, your familiar friends are joined by more and more points of light, appearing as if they were winking into existence for the very first time tonight.
Until the whole sky is aglow with them.

In the city, or most other places on land I’ve ever been, there’s just too much light-pollution to appreciate that stars have a unique shine of their own.
“Starlight” is just a trite expression without meaning.
But they really do glow.
On a dark, moonless night in the Pacific, you can start to pick out the top of the white-capped waves and the faintest hint of storm clouds in the far distance by the starlight alone. The heavens appearing to rock gently back and forth above you, until you grasp that it's not the sky moving but the boat riding the Ocean swell beneath you.

And every once in a while, a shooting star will streak across the sky leaving a trail of white burned on your retina.
A glorious final hurrah for a little piece of space rock, having spent an eternity spinning alone through the solar system before disappearing in a blaze of transient glory in our atmosphere.

As if I didn’t already feel tiny and insignificant enough floating in the middle of the largest ocean on Earth, for the first time -peering into the depths of our Galaxy, which is after all, only one of millions of galaxies in the Universe- I realised how much we don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Lord knows I’m not a religious person, but that was pretty transcendental.
I guess night-shift has its perks after all...

x

Flora and fauna

The JR seems to have turned into a giant biological snowball, picking up cute little hitchhikers on its way south.

You've got to remember that apart from the occasional fishing boat or container ship, we’re the only solid thing within a 1500 mile radius out here, so we attract anything that’s looking for a meal or is too horribly lost and exhausted to fly any further.

Because we stay in the same spot for a few days while we’re drilling we become something of a transient atoll, offering food, shelter and (probably) entertainment to the many denizens of the Pacific we pass on our way. We throw our food leftovers overboard (after very carefully extracting all of the burnables/recyclables/anything not biodegradable or edible) which attracts lots of little fish looking for shelter and a quick snack.

Unfortunately for the little fish, word soon gets out about the bonanza and predatory Mahi Mahi are swiftly on the scene looking for a light meal… These guys are really cool looking though; up to a metre long, bluey green with electric-blue side fins and faces like a caved-in whale.



They’re hard to photograph well from the ship (this one was taken by Amber), but I’ll try and get a photo if one “commits suicide” and throws itself onto the deck, (fishing isn’t allowed on the JR in case one of the lines gets tangled in the propellers or the drill string…).

I feel sorry for the little flying fish, it seems like everybody wants to eat the poor things -in fact I’ll admit to being one of them. I’ve seen both Mahi Mahi and orange squid chasing them down and devouring them whole during my daily 2.30am fresh-air break from the lab.

We’ve had a permanent gang of big ocean-going birds circling the boat from the get-go. Huge brown things with razor sharp wings, gliding effortless just above the water. They get really active just as the sun’s coming up, swooping up and down in the pink glow as if to say “we made it through another night. Boo yeah!”



We also have our regular little visitors; the ever so cute but ever so stupid Storm Petrels.
These little guys are ocean-going too so they should be out here in the middle of the ocean I suppose, but unfortunately they seem to have a problem understanding that the JR is made of metal and is therefore quite hard…
They regularly crash-land onto the deck at night, then sort of flollop about on their spindly little legs until someone take pity on them and throws them back overboard.



I found this little guy the other night looking truly pathetic, wobbling about on the smoking deck. So I picked him up, took him to the edge and threw him into the air (probably whilst yelling “fly my pretty, fly!” if I know myself at all).
Obviously about 6 seconds later, the wretched little thing did a full 180, swerved back towards the light, thumped into a wall and slid back down onto the deck.

Hopeless.
So I tucked him up in the corner and left him to work it out by himself.
I ain’t no Florence Nightingale.

On a more cheerful note, apart from being a petrel-graveyard we’re also a floating oasis for any unfortunate passing land-creatures that really, really shouldn’t be out here. In our second week we even had a group of about 10 giant brown dragonflies, that surely belong in someone's pond and not out here in the big blue sea?

Our cutest little stowaways were blown in last week when we had a spot of bad weather though...
We were working away in the lab on the night shift, wind and rain howling all around, when there was this imperceptible little tap at the window.

Closer inspection revealed this poor bedraggled little ball of fluff looking through the window with some kind of workhouse-orphan-please-sir-may-i-have-some-more expression.

.

Even this grizzled old sea-dog’s heart was touched.

We discovered that there’s actually a flock of 10 of these little finches living on the boat now. Hoping around amidst the drilling equipment and the cargo boxes. If you sit on the top deck on a sunny day and squint a little bit, you can almost convince yourself you’re in a park.
Almost.

I sort of imagine they’re like the characters from Lost. Crash landed onto a strange foreign island full of exotic beasts and uncomfortable social situations. Having to form a new society out of the ashes of the old one.

I think I might be cracking up actually.

Anyway, we also picked up a more spectacular guest the other day; some kind of big-ass heron!
You know, the tall spindly things you’d see standing in the Serpentine looking for little fishes in the shallows. Well that poor chap really shouldn’t be out here. Sure he’s got long legs but they’re definitely not 3600m long...

My sympathy dwindled somewhat when someone told me he’d found a source of food after all…. The little finches!
Poor little guys.
Survived the storm and the epic journey across the ocean, only to be laid low by a giant heron on a drilling boat. What are the odds? (This story get’s more Lost-like, the more I think about it actually. Hmm.)
So anyway we’re down to a flock of 7 and counting now.

Hopefully there’ll still be enough left on board once we get to Australia to start a new colony and cause an ecological disaster of biblical proportions.

If anyone asks… it was wasn’t us ok.

x

Over the hump and out of the grump

Ahoy shipmates!

It’s 3am on a Friday night. Perfect time for a quick blog!


-My last beer in Yokohama. It was so cold there were actually beautiful, tiny, ice crystals beginning to form in it… sigh.

We had our “hump day” party two weeks ago to mark getting over the mid-way “hump” of the expedition. (As someone, rather ambiguously, stated at the time: “It’s all downhill from here!” -which I guess you could interpret one of two ways).
It was actually really good fun and a chance to let off some steam.

Fyi I joined this party at 12.30am; 45 minutes after waking up for the day and 15 minutes after eating my “morning” muesli.
So to put this in context, it was a bit like rolling out of bed at 7.45am, eating breakfast at 8.15am and by 8.30am being at your office, stone-cold-sober, throwing shapes to Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys, and not stopping until 12.30pm… when you had to go back to work.
Interesting experience.

It’s the 6th week of the expedition now and we’re currently finishing up drilling at our very last site (Site U1350, on Ori Massif, Central High of Shatsky Rise - should you be terribly concerned by the details), where operations are supposed to stop for good in about 3 days time.

The first three sites had plenty of interesting sediments, which didn’t please the igneous guys all that much, but certainly kept the three little sedimentologists busy…

Basically my life has been reduced to this:



Laptop full of unfinished work: check.
Plastic tumbler full of super-sweet American cereal to get me through the night: check.

Then there’s the fact that in three days time “we turn into a carnival cruise liner!” (as our eminent chief scientist put it) with the beginning of our 2 week transit to Australia.
Wooooooo hoooooo!!

Hopefully this will be an opportunity for some. Much. Needed. Rest. And. Relaxation.

So I’m hoping there'll be time for hanging out with these guys:



And time for some of this:


-initial enthusiasm about life on the ocean waves during the transit, (all well and good until i realised i was lounging about 1m away from the massive radiation source that is the satellite uplink pod. doh).


and a chance to see some of these:

- a whale!



and more of this:




and less of these:


-even though some of them are really pretty…

So, wish me luck on the final push.

x

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink…

…well almost.

Two days ago I had my first sober birthday since I was about 13, which was surprisingly good fun.
I hit the big 25 (which felt fairly momentous I have to say) and yet still managed to be the second youngest person on the whole ship. Ah youth.

Everyone was really nice, and they even baked me a cool cake with hearts and everything:


I particularly appreciated the "we love u" that the nice kitchen boys put on there. See, it pays to smile and say thank you from time to time :)

Coincidently, it was also the co-chief (head honcho) Takashi’s birthday too, so here we are enjoying our moment in the sun:



It was also a fun day because we were doing a bit-change for the drilling process (bear with me, the fun part is coming….).

Basically the bit (the sharp thing on the end of the pipe that cuts the rock) needed changing because it had worn out (well you’d be worn out too it you’d been cutting through 250m of basalt for 3 days straight).
So, this necessitated bringing up the whole drill string (that’s 4km of pipe down to the seafloor plus the 250m that’s in the hole), changing the bit for a new one on the ship, reassembling the whole thing and lowering it all the way back down, and then getting it back into the hole.

That’s right; in the total darkness 4 km below you, you have to get the drill bit on the end of your pipe, back into the original 30cm diameter hole on the sea floor.
30cm in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
Oh and the pipe is really bendy like a straw (even though it’s made of steel), and there are currents pushing the whole thing (including the boat) around.

To put this in context, this is like me giving you a reasonably stiff noodle somewhere in Regent’s Park and asking you to thread it through a polo mint somewhere near London Bridge.

Do you think you could do that?

Well these drilling boys can.
Frankly, I’m in awe.

To be honest, they do have the slight advantage of having a “reentry cone” (like a big funnel) to guide them in when they get close enough and a B+W camera which they lower down to help them see where they're going and to “re-enter the hole” as it's often described (to much tittering).

So here’s a video from the bottom of the ocean….


It's a bit grainy, but you can make out the pipe and the cone. (The pointy thing to the left is just a phenomenally useless compass).

And here, finally, is the fun bit.
Are you still there? No? Oh well, your loss.

The fun bit is we all got to decorate some polystyrene cups with whatever we like (i thought i'd better stick with the "i'm on a boat!" theme), then we tied the bag of cups to the camera they sent down into the abyss and let the phenomenal pressure of the deep crush them!

This is my cup before it was sent down:



and here is it afterwards:


cool huh!

And here’s a selection of other people’s cups with an unmutilated one for scale...



And here is a picture of me looking extremely smug about the whole thing.



Pretty neat birthday present I reckon.
Not often you get something you can put on your shelf that’s been to Hell and back…

Over and out x

Whoosh!

The "moon pool geyser" during the storm, as promised.
(Please excuse the slightly unhinged laughter; I was wearing flipflops and a cardigan during a typhoon, was getting absolutely soaked and was clearly high as a kite).

Before the storm rolled in, the night-shift science gals went up on the top-deck to see how windy it was getting up there...


Not a recipe for a good hair day methinks.


The cloud was so thick that it felt like nighttime all day long. The rig looked particularly spooky in the stormy afterglow.



The calm after the storm.


The big mass of cloud in the background is the typhoon moving north (to the right) as we were heading south (to the left). (You might say were were "ships passing in the night", if you were the sort of person who liked terrible word-play like that, and was as tired as i am right now).

So for now, no more weather-related drama.
We're at our next site on the Southern Rise, have been successfully drilling for two days and have recovered an absolute ton of sediment. I have more mud than i know what to do with and i'm THRILLED.
(The sad thing is, I truly am thrilled).
Ah well, it takes all sorts to make a world :)

Toodle pip
x