Loading the Boat

Dr. Krest, Leslie, Erik, and I left the USF yesterday at 1:30 in the afternoon, after loading the trailer and truck.  We drove all the way to Mobile, Alabama before stopping for the night.  Then today, we drove through Mississippi, to Louisiana, past New Orleans, and stopped at Cocodrie, Louisiana.  Cocodrie means crocodile in French.  It is an appropriate name, as many crocodiles inhabit this marsh land.  This is where lumcon is located.  We arrived about 3:30 in the afternoon and began transferring our equipment from the trailer to the Pelican.  

Leslie and Erik carrying barrels.

After a short pre-cruise meeting in the galley, which provided valuable safety information, we began nailing and lashing our equipment to the lab benches.  

This prevents the equipment from falling over while at sea.  

Erik lashing the RaDeCC pumps to hooks on the lab bench in the dry lab.

So far, the only mishap we have had concerns the RaDeCC.  The one of the converter boxes which relays information from the machine to the computer is not working.  So, we can only run two samples at a time instead of four.  I have heard of a few things breaking in the wet lab, but I do not have specific information.  There are about 15 scientist onboard and 5 crew members.  So, it is a full ship, with a lot of equipment.  We 

are still working on odd jobs, such as lashing barrels and pumps to the deck.  We leave dock at 12:01 am Thursday.  We will arrive at our first station 6-8 hours after that.  Leslie and Erik will be working from 12 am to noon, and Dr. Krest and I will be working from noon to midnight everyday.  Expect more blogs from the 4 of us tomorrow.  I am going to try to upload video of what we are doing in my next blog.

Dr. Krest is putting I-splices and back-splices into a rope we use for lashing.  This reinforces the rope.  I am editing on pictures for this blog!

The Pelican at sunset.

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