Weather: Nice and calm - very calm - too calm

Location: Loch Broom

Food: Mixed Grill and it was YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM!!!

Sweeping up the Broom

Above: Sunset over a flat calm sea. Lastnights sunset was spectacular and once again the sea around the entrance to the loch was flat calm.

Little message....

I got a bit of a shock today. I decided that I would buy a logger that details traffic to this website and what pages people have been viewing. Yesterday this website - in particular the blog - was viewed over 350 times! Whoah!!! I think this must be the entire population of Killin - Heathers hometown! Big HELLO to all those people in Killin (especially Heather's mum and dad)!!!!! Somebody told me the town is using this blog as an early warning system to know when she is coming home :-s

The past few days have been mega busy and over the next few days I will get back into talking about local areas and will give you guys a detailed description of multibeam (swath) so you know what i've been going on about!!!

A few people have suggested I write a bit about myelf so you guys can put a face to me (lol don't want to scare you!!!).

Last 24hrs...

Ok last night was another of those very special nights that this cruise has been crammed full of! At around 7ish we kicked off surveying and ran a total of eight survey lines. Once started swath is very very boring!! When i first started getting into oceanography I was engrossed by Mr. Ballard's "Discovery of the Titanic" - in it he describes the long seemingly endless hours of swathing. As a child I thought that he was over-exaggerating- now I know that swathing is indeed very tedious (it can also be very rewarding when you find a wreck like the Titanic). luckily, I am surrounded by a lot of very colorful people who make the time pass much quicker and its true that you meet a lot of different people when your at sea.

Sometimes there is actually something interesting to look at on the seabed - after more than six hours of swath you are usually seeing strange objects on the seabed.... Spanish Galleons, Trolleys and car tires.

Last night I had Eamonn, Bob, Julia and James and then later in the night Heather, Gavin and Dan to keep me company. Usually a bowl of sweets appear (THE PAST FEW NIGHTS ITS BEEN QUALITY STREETS AND SOMEBODY KEEPS TAKING THE CARAMEL AND STRAWBERRY SWEETS - ARGHHHHHH!!) and there is copious amounts of tea and coffee and chit chat. Music is also essential during long hours of swath. Calibrating the swath system went as expected and gave both those on the bridge as well as Eamonn and myself plenty of chance to practice conducting serious surveying methods. The calibration went on into the very early hours of the morning.

Once run the swath lines was finished it was necessary for me and Eamonn to check the data and calibrate the system so that the system is working in its best configuration for collecting data in this part of the world. Whilst we were getting ready to calibrate the system it decided to crash and it was necessary to reload all the data - judging by what the computer was saying it would take a number of hours to reload the data!! With this in mind we went outside and had a cup of tea out on deck.

As there is no light pollution from anywhere all the stars were visible in the sky. Very very impressive. Whilst we were having a chat what appeared to be a white light appeared in the sky and started drifting down. I notified the bridge that I had seen a light some distance out and they kept a look out. A few minutes later I saw another light and informed them again. About ten minutes later what appeared to be a very bright star was visible in the sky (in roughly the same place)- it was probably Venus or something but by some weird optical effect made it look like it was moving (UFO's - [mentally think about twilight zone or x-files music]. They must have thought I was mad on the bridge. Anyway, when we went back into look at the system it had crashed again so we decided to call it quits for the night as we were both tired and getting frustrated.

The next day I woke just before the morning meeting and started attacking the swath system - by lunchtime everything was looking good and we had the calibration under control. Just after lunch word came around that the engineers were doing some planned maintenance near the porthole that is used to view the props (this is usually in a sealed space). Once they had finished their work they asked if anybody would like to see the propellers in action. I decided to give it a go and made the journey deep down into the ship..... very impressive to see a propellers in action. I Took some pictures and Dan made a video.

As we plan to do swath throughout the evening I had a few hours to myself in the afternoon and started processing some of the panoramas that i have photographed during the cruise. In the next few days I will add these to the website.

I've got to make a special mention of our dinner - mixed grill - the catering team did a superb job!!! It was top notch.

Anyway bit of shut eye - lots of swathing tonight.

Above: Panormaic image of the entrance to Loch Broom

CLICK HERE TO SEE DAN'S VIDEO OF THE PROPS IN ACTION

Bob and Eamon watch as we map the seabed

James hard at work

James succombing to swath syndrome

Bob with cores from the vibro-core

Julia with some of the cores

Bernie goes down into the prop-viewing area.

Me heading down into the depths of the ship

With the cover off the prop viewing area the NMFD gremlin managed to escape.

Followed closely by his sidekick

A shot of the port-prop through the viewing window

Julia at the controls of the vibro-corer (Picture courtesy of Dave Smith - BGS)

Lots and lots of geology!!!