Brian Powell

Today is the 30th day of the cruise: exactly half-way through. We were planning on still being on ice station today; however, due to the lack of cooperation from the ice, we have resumed surveying the water in the area. We will probably study the region for another 18-20 days before setting off on the voyage home. We are searching for an area to begin what we call, "Phase 3." During this time, we will place a Lagrangian float at the bottom of the mixed layer and using an acoustical transducer to follow it around for awhile. From the ship, we will have a number of instruments measuring the microstructure of the water column searching for turbulence. To celebrate hump day, I have sent a number of new pictures that should be added to the website. Life aboard the ship has really settled into a normal routine. I tend to sleep from 2am until 8-9am, and I eat four meals a day: 9:30am, 12pm, 6pm, and 12am. That has given me a 7lb gain from my pre-cruise weight. We still have plenty of fruit which is very nice. Vegetables are all from the can now. We must have a flock of chickens somewhere because the cooks seem to use hundreds of eggs per day. We always have 2-3 new desserts each day. Astonishment of all, being a cake lover, I have become rather tired of cake. At least for the short term. Thanks to Nancy Reagan, all US research vessels are dry, and I miss a nice glass of wine with dinner at times. Today being Friday, we will have an emergency/evacuation drill after lunch I can almost guarantee. They try to make them at "random" times so that we remain "sharp"; however, random seems to mean an hour after changing shifts at noon friday. With little in the way of entertainment (mostly working), it was disappointing that the ice station broke up as we had been planning a soccer game. A couple of people had brought cross-country skis and did a little bit of skiing. I had the kite flying expeditions to open water regions, which if it sounds like a boondoggle, it sort of was (even though we were able to measure some incredible data)--the beauties of being a remote sensing person. We are having a bit of a warm spell (which is trouble for the experiment as we need ice formation, not melt) with temps getting to around -5C. It hardly requires a jacket when going outside.

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