Location: East of Wick, Moray of Firth

Problems, Meetings and Ostrich

Okay, today was manic and hopefully there won't be many days like it this cruise. A lot of the systems in our care have been playing up after being switched off for some time. The SBP (Sub-Bottom-profiler!!) which is used for analyzing below the seabed was the biggest of our worries. It is critical for this cruise and we have not been able to start it since the start of the cruise - Eamon (My boss), Jim (Deck Engineer) and I have spent numerous hours taking it to bits and studying the individual components. At around 8pm we found the problem - one of the resistors in the power supply unit for the system had failed and destroyed itself. Now we need to see if we can fix it or what we can do to bring the system online

We let the swath system have a run today and mapped a couple of miles of seabed. All seemed ok and we got some good 3d data of the seabed.

Had to take part in the morning meeting with the Captain where we were briefed on what we were doing this cruise and the roles of the various people involved and to discuss the problems encountered during the last 24hrs.

Spent the morning helping the scientific staff setup there PC's etc - all fun!

Afternoon saw a crew briefing where we were told the mission objectives and the locations where we will be drilling the seabed.

Finally got the chance to have a beer then off to bed. Have been told I may need to get up at 3am to setup tracking for the drill when it does its first dive!!!!

Supper was Ostrich steaks…. Different but very tasty!!!

A slightly frustrated but still smiling Leighton! These computers are the swath (Sea bed mapping), USBL (Tracking underwater objects), Wave Radar (tells us the size of the waves), SURFMET - metorlogical data, EK60 (Fish Finder), CLAM (Used for logging winch operations) and equippment for analysing under the seabed

Ships Systems for Mapping the seabed. The system on the right is used to three-dimensionally map the seabed. The colors show the changing depths. This is simply a sloping seabed- will add some pictures of better features when we encounter them!!

Mission Objectives Meeting. The crew get detailed on where we are going and what the Scientific party would like to achieve

Chief Scientist detailing the locations where we are going to drill the seabed.

BGS Rock Drill on the back deck. This bit of equipment drills into the seabed and extracts rock samples.

The SBP - Eamon, Jim and me investigate the problem!!!