Here's Yvonne launching an XCTD as we were coming up to station. It was a gorgeous night. We've had a lot of beautiful clear nights lately thanks to our first high pressure system. A planet is twinkling in the sky. Earlier in the night it had been right above the horizon and very red, so we had thought it was Mars. Parissa tried to convince us that it was Neptune. I'm not sure what the final verdict was. We see Venus most nights, but it is closer to the moon. I missed the actual sun rise, but Adam, the second mate, said that there was an amazing green flash. He said he would have had time to call down and tell the lab to go out and see it. Mostly he was taunting me for missing it.
Here we are on station. You can see how incredibly flat it was when we brought the CTD out of the water. The day watch recovered this cast. John always wears is yellow waterproof pants, and usually his jacket, when he is recovering the CTD or sampling oxygens. Lucian is the day watch's deck leader. Luis helps recover the CTD and samples salts and nutrients. Clindor is the AB running the winch. Early in the cruise, before we had met him, we assumed he was Russian because of his accent over the squawk box. Parissa thought he sounded South American, and then Jamaican, with his "roger dat." He's Honduran.
This is the analytical lab where Scott and Dan work. They have 9 speakers in the lab. There was a major emergency in the lab before this station. They were running about 12 programs on the music computer; among them, listening to music, looking at pictures, and trying to watch a Southpark video. The computer made a noise and just went black. It wouldn't turn on again. They started getting out a spare and scavenged numerous parts from other lab backup computers. In the end, it just turned on again. Much relief. Whenever one of them walks into the lab, he says "Less food." The other immediately replies, "More Coffee!" Their coffee setup occupies a prime spot next to the salinometer. We hear their coffee grinder turn on a lot each day. It's one of the most important pieces of equipment down here.
