Part 2: Not Mushroom For More Risotto

I’m surrounded by blue! I’ve contacted the whales through the language of willpower to let them know I’m about. But I think they’ll wait until after our stop by Aberdeen to visit us. I’m still doing regular checks for them just in case: it’s a good excuse to get out of the labs and go up to ‘monkey island’ on top of the ship.

In the labs, we’ve been using all our newly gained knotting skills to lash everything tightly to the benches so they are not mercy to the sea. Equipment is mounted on heavy boards by drilling in hooks, then wrapping them in rope. I know full well that I’ll regret my somewhat abstract wrapping technique and I know everything is going to be hard to detach at the end.

By now, with all the unpacking of heavy boxes and manual labour, I’m sure you’re assuming my strength is fading. I must be coming to the end of the energy reserves I boarded the ship with. Yet, low and behold, I have been fed! And the food has been unlimited, tasty, and, wait for it, vegan! Obviously, the starters and desserts have been avoided mostly, but the purser picked up on this and now brings me a fruit platter. I almost wanted to be able to go on about how difficult this experience is, but it’s like magic. You sit in the saloon, name the food you want from the three options, and it appears in front of you just like in Hogwarts.

I have eaten so much at every meal, enjoying stuffed peppers, mushroom risotto, vegan burritos and more. Chances of starvation are currently very small. Chances of obesity, exponentially increasing.

If you want to check our progress, check out this link, which uploads a photo every 15 minutes:

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/images/webcams/rrs-james-clark-ross-webcam/.

We have fiveish more days before we reach our sampling area, but we are going to do a shakedown (practice) station on the 12th. We’re just stopping near Aberdeen to allow a boat transfer of engineers. So, we have plenty of time to get set up, enjoy the sun, and look out for the whales. I’ve heard the weather tomorrow is not going to be nearly as calm though… we’ll see.

Part 3 – Sea sick?