Life on the Nancy Foster!

WOW, this week is just flying on by! I started out the first couple nights working the 4pm to midnight shift. This was a good shift and I spent that time learning how to make a map in Arc GIS. The map shown below took me only about 5 hours to make! HaHa! Seriously, I kept running into issues, but I had a lot of great help and the next night it didn't take me that long at all.



This is my new friend Tauna being silly! But actually she is about to help out with the deployment of the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle). More about operations in another blog post. I have been up today since 3:30 am and it is about 10 pm. I have pretty much been working this whole time with the exception for breaks to eat, take pictures of daily operations, or to watch the ROV video.



Life on the Nancy Foster so far is going really well. I am lucky though because I just got onboard last Saturday. Everyone else has been living on this boat for over two weeks, and most are ready to get off already! I have the top bunk in my room that is shared between a total of four of us. We really are not in the room other than to go to sleep when we can. As I said above my shift was 4pm until midnight, but then it was changed to the 4 am to Noon shift! Either way, I am working throughout the day if something needs to be done and I am awake. I thought getting up at 3:30 am was going to be near impossible, but so far it has been fine. The food here is great! But just way too much of it! There is a candy jar, an ice cream freezer (that's right only loaded with ice cream), and the meals are mighty and heavy! Tonight though we had baked tilapia and wild rice. It was really nice to have something light. Typical other meals have included: Turkey dinner with stuffing and mashed potatoes, meatloaf and mashed, cheeseburgers, chili cheese dogs, pasta primavera, etc. etc. One night we had Beef Tenderloin! It was the best piece of meat I have had in a super long time! Makes me want to figure out how to make it on my own! But I guess the crew said that dinners like the tenderloin type caliber used to be all of the time, but now they get this prepackaged Navy foods that are already prepared and easier on the chef and last longer.

Below are pictures of the ships crew, regular full time NOAA ship employees. The other picture is of the Science Crew! Look for me in there! Hehe...




So....GOOD NIGHT! I need sleep! Leaving with a nice picture of the sky! Tomorrow I hope to have time to write a couple blogs all about the science aboard the ship!