We had a good rainsquall during the night. It had to be a rainsquall, as boats never are washed in the morning, especially three hours before launch. The boat deck below the davits blanketed with water and splashing my feet as the ship rolled port to starboard and vice versa. I climbed onto the small boats for their weekly inspection and waited until the right roll for the water not to cover the path I had to walk on before proceeding. I did not bring my rain boots with me as we usually do not have this much rain accumulating. Last time I used rain boots was in Alaska and it did not help much there.
Necker Island is a smaller version of Nihoa. Except, this island is brutal to humans. The wind and nature’s elements rip through the island that has no trees with minimal grass like vegetation. It is a huge mountainous rock with its peak exposed above the surface of the ocean. It has no human inhabitants with nature’s most brutal elements for the sub tropics pounding it. Unlike Nihoa, there is no sign of past civilization and the physical environment would not allow it. Trees are lacking as well as soil. Last cruise, the ship dropped off two scientists who stayed on the island for 18 days. Their only contact with the outside world was through an Iridium phone. Since Necker is solid rock, they could not pitch a tent for shelter and instead used sleeping bags. Now that is what I call “Survivor” and that type of reality show I would watch as it is people doing it for a cause instead of money. Last year I talked to two scientists who stayed on Nihoa for the same amount of time. We dropped them off at the beginning of the cruise and picked them up on our way back to Honolulu. They too had an Iridium phone for outside contact and then a portable two-way VHF radio to talk to us when we approached.
The seas are choppy due to the winds. We had some cloudiness in the morning with rain. The island is more like a bird sanctuary and there are plenty of those flying around the ship. I took a video and picture of a bird sitting on my wind anemometer placed on the jack staff on the bow of the ship. I was not happy with my uninvited visitor, as it appears the aluminum spikes on the anemometer blew off. I installed it in Bellingham last winter riding in a bucket with a crane and recall putting spikes on there to prevent things such as this. You can see on the photo the bird fighting off two others who seem to want to perch on the anemometer. They have this huge island off our port side and yet they fight over this small real estate. They do a magnificent job of mimicking humans in that aspect.
I watched a borrowed DVD last night that was a teen movie of two years ago. I thought it would be a comedy like the teen flicks of the 80’s with some teasing but it was not. Like its title, it was “Superbad.” It was crude and brought back some painful memories of adolescence of the not so beautiful people of which I was by default in that unfortunate group. Slept good afterwards and so I did as I woke up a few minutes late. Thankfully, I took a shower the night before and off to greet another working day. There are no weekends out here and after a while, you lose track of what day of the week it is. Our GPS and satellite clocks are set to UTC so it becomes the next day on those clocks when it is two in the afternoon here in Hawaii Time zone.
Nothing pressing except the video monitor, which is brand spanking new, lost two channels so I bypassed it to feed the video signal directly into the Close Circuit Television distribution network. Weekly updates of operating systems and anti-virus on servers and my shop desktops. We use Microsoft Windows here so updates on a regular schedule are necessary along with disk cleaning and defragmentation.
I was monitoring radio transmissions while I was making network cables. I have to hand it to the veteran deck crew here on the Hi’ialakai. They drive the small boats that take the scientist/divers to their locations and the ones who do not drive are involved in launch and recovery. I sailed with the chief boatswain years ago on the Rainier in Alaska. The professionalism practiced and displayed by the deck crew shows how fortunate we are to have them. The turnover rate in that department is low compared to other ships in the fleet.
I just returned from dinner in the gallery. I always say to myself that I am going to be discipline and not gain weight. So far, I have not been successful and return to the gym is going to be a requirement. We have three people working in the stewards department. The hours are long for them. During deployment, their days start around three in the morning to prepare lunch boxes for the science crew for their dives and when they are finished with that, breakfast for everyone and then go into prep and lunch mode after that. Several hours of napping and then at three in the afternoon you will see the three of them getting ready for dinner. Those who have never sailed always wonder why when we are in port the galley is closed in the weekday evenings and all weekend.
They just announced the ship’s store is open. That is where we buy our sodas, snacks, ship T-shirts, and souvenirs. Maybe I will go look and get a soda for the eight o’clock movie. On the other hand, maybe listen to CTD (Condensation, Temperature, and Density) ops on my handheld VHF radio. That is collecting water samples for analysis from different depths. I heard on the radio that there is quite a bit of methane activity in the area. These scientific cruises are always interesting.
Good night from Necker Island
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