Weather: Nice and calm and its sunny (at times)

Location: Loch Broom

Food: Chicken Kiev

Back to Loch Broom........

A quick note about the ship's internet!

Okay, it’s been a while since the blog has been updated. The Internet on the ship is currently not working properly. This only affects browsing the Internet - i.e. looking at internet pages with a web browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Uploading stuff to the blog is different as it bypasses this computer. Me and the Systems Manager have been looking at this and hope to get it up and running ASAP - we don't want the ship's crew lynch mobbing us. Luckily the phones are working..... At the time this went to press the internet was back up and running.

The past few days

The last three days have been very busy and highly frustrating for both the BGS and the tech's onboard. Thursday night we were operating in the vicinity of the Flannan Isle. The rock drill was deployed after considerable work by the BGS Team to get it fully operational - everything appeared to be going okay. At this point I left and went to the bar. Then to bed.

I woke up the next morning just before lunch (was working till 2am). The drill had developed a fault and it was necessary for it to be recovered - the decision was then made to cease drilling operations for the remainder of this cruise and change over to the vibro-core. The Vibro-core is a tried and tested bit of kit used to extract core samples from the seabed (or sea loch).

With the drill out of action it was decided that we would return to the areas we had previously gravity-cored around Ullapool and conduct vibro-coring operations during the day and swath surveying during the night.

The vibro-core needed to be swapped with the rock drill - this is quite a big operation and takes a good 12 hours to swap the two around. With this in mind it was necessary to undertake this in calm waters - we therefore set a course for a sheltered position near Loch Broom and Friday night was spent swapping the rock drill for the vibro-core.

The change of operation from drilling to coring and swath (seabed mapping) is a bit of a nightmare. There are only two of us on the ship who are currently trained to operate the swath (Eamonn and myself) so things have been really busy around our other duties!! Usually on a swath cruise we have half-a-dozen people technical staff – on this cruise I’m the only technician onboard :-s

Anyway - the weather has been favorable near the coast and yesterday evening whilst on approach to Loch Broom the sea was flat calm and I mean flat calm. This was really spectacular as you could see dolphins breaking the surface miles away - every little surface disturbance was visible – giving away all manner of aquatic life.

Seeing dolphins swimming towards the ship I made my way up to the bow and watched them jumping in front of our bow wave - very impressive – it amazing how fast they can actually swim and they made it look so effortless.

It was also amazing to see the sunset - the mountains glowed red as the sun dipped over the horizon and a large number of people gathered on deck. The mornings have been just as spectacular and the mountain tops have been covered in drifting clouds. During our previous visits to these Lochs it constantly rained and the thick rain clouds hid the mountains from site. When the sun is out it transforms this area into one of the most beautiful parts of the UK.

Coring operations over the weekend have gone well and the BGS teams are working flat out to get a good selection of cores from the sea lochs

Saturday night was meant to be our first major attempt at using the surveying equipment. Before we can collect meaningful data we have to calibrate the swath system. This is quite a long task. We spent the day closely planning the operation with the captain and came up with a detailed plan of action for the evening.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”

Calibration requires certain types of sub sea topography (terrain) and it was necessary to locate the optimum slopes and features that would ensure the best calibration of the swath system. The captain consulted charts of the local area and came up with an ideal location for us to calibrate the system..

When we get to an area which we intend to survey it is necessary to deploy a SVP (sound velocity probe) as the speed of sound in water varies (due to a number of factors) and knowing the speed of sound through water is critical to our multi-beam sonar which uses sound waves to profile the seabed!

For this reason it is necessary to deploy a probe into the water which profiles the speed of sound at different depths – this can then be fed into our computer to help get the best data during a survey.

Once the SVP data is in the computer the ship moves along a designate line (survey line) and maps the seabed. At the end of the line we turn the ship back around and do the same again. As the line is the same – the features should be the same. If there are any differences we calibrate the system so that they match.

The only problem was the system started to play up just as we got into position and it took Eamonn and me into the early hours of the morning to get it up and running again. It was a very stressful night to say the least – lots of frustration!

Anyway, once the system was up and running again it was decided that we would do another SVP as we believed the data may have been corrupted - we deployed the SVP but the current was very very strong and we aborted the operation for 24hrs.

On top of this Wales went out of the Rugby World Cup and by all accounts they played [CENSORED]

Today was a bit more interesting and I an Eamonn took a good look at the SVP and the software used to get the data from the probe and translate it. After sometime we came up with the optimum settings for deploying SVP's in sea lochs (incase we have to do it again) – INSERT LOUD SCREAM HERE

Little Loch Broom is spectacular and this morning the weather was glorious. The sun illuminated the whole loch and it truly was beautiful. Unfortunately I have lots of work to do and had to spend the morning looking at a variety of IT issues.

At 1 o'clock the lifeboats had to be launched - no emergency - they have to be regularly tested to ensure that they and their launch system are in tip-top working condition (in the unlikely event we ever have to use them).

As me and Eamonn had finished working on all the current problems and I decided to go with the crew when they launched it. The experience was something special as I have never been in a lifeboat during launch (thank God). It was slightly scary at points - when the lifeboat started lowering it rocked quite a bit and there were some worried looking people inside. For the first time this trip I started feeling a bit queasy as we rocked back and forth.

When we launched the lifeboat it only had 6 people onboard – it would be unbearable with a full compliment of 54 people! Once in the water we did a lap of the ship to run the lifeboat engine and give it some exercise.

Soon we were back onboard and testing the other lifeboat - this launch was a lot smoother and during our lap of the ship we were able to watch the BGS vibro-core being recovered from a safe distance.

More calibrating tonight….. lets see what happens

Clouds over the mountains at day break. Its great having a cup of tea at the start of the day just before work and seeing such great scenery as this!!!

Early morning in the Loch amongst the Mountain....

Mountains glowing red at sunset

BGS Vibro-Corer being setup instead of the BGS Rock Drill

Clouds on the Mountains

Heather and Gav hard at work

Everyone on deck as the watch the Vibro-Core deployed for the first time

Jim and Eamon take a look at one of our winches

Chris and Jim take a look at one of our winches

Picture of a happy looking Jullia

SVP probe recovery during the night

The BGS night-shift have created the worlds biggest Jenga game out of core boxes

Left: The inside of the lifeboat. Right: Jacqui (and Chris) getting ready in the lifeboat

RRS James Cook from the lifeboat.

Another shot of RRS James Cook in the Little Broom Loch

And another........

And Another.........

Darcy explains the controls of the lifeboat to Jacqui

Darcy at the helm

Yours truly strapped into the lifeboat

RRS James Cook

Yours truly gets shown the controls for the lifeboat.

BGS Vibro-core comes back onboard

Aft-end shot of the Vibro-core coming back onboard

The Vibro-Core and RRS James Cook