Weather: Force 5/6 gusting to 8. Rain. Bitterly Cold

Location: Off Wick

Food: Sirloin Steak!!!!

Had to work hard to get myself out of bed today. In the end I didn't have to get up at 3am - but had a restless night sleep thinking that I was going to get called. The weather deterioated over night and the ship was rolling a little bit this morning. The rock drill had some problems during the night and they couldn't deploy at the time they were meant to. The test drills were called off and we made our way to our first "proper" drill site - located in the middle of a millatry exercise area. We have lso been informed that we will be operating in a NATO trainning area later this week during a big exercise..........

Spent the morning working on the display systems for the ship. Had to attend the morning meeting which highlighted the problems that occured during the night. It seems that the BGS guys equipment had blown a fuse and we havenot got a spare onboard suitable for the purpuse. They worked hard all morning and we will be anchoring off a yet-to-be-decided port in the next few days to transfer fuses to the ship.

The weather has changed today - it is freezeing!!!! I have donned jeans, jumper and wolly hat. The wind out side is very very very cold and your hands go numb in seconds!!!! It rained for a bit earlier and it was physically painful the speed the wind was whipping it at us.

Saw a plume of water from a whale.

The afternoon saw the first proper drill using the rock drill - it didn't all go to plan!!! I was operating the ship's USBL positioning system and was infromed by the bridge that the ship was in position. My screen said we were 900m off. The captain was stood behind me when I noted the descrepancy and stopped deploying the drill until everyone could agree on the location. The scientists were asked to check the longitude and latitutde they had supplied and I checked the computer - all indicated we were 900m off target. Everyone was getting a bit frustrated so I decided to check how far the bridge were off there waypoint - they replied "about 900m" - I think we must have misheard them in our enthusiasm to deploy the drill!!

Just as the rock drill was about to be deployed a small hydraulic leak on deck occured and had to be rectified before the rock drill could finally be used. Then the USBL pole used to communicate with the rock drill and give its position under would not extend from the hull and had to be fixed... Once again it was a simple problem....... Finally the rock drill was in the water.........the tracking for it failed...........then the communication with the rock drill became problamatic. All minor problems..... The sort of thing that happens when your deploying a complex bit of kit for the first time

Anyway spent the rest of the day worrying about tracking the rock drill and phoning the company who produces the kit up... It isn't even our equipment and weve never been trainned to use it..... and its a friday so everyone goes home early so couldn't get hold of anyone.

Knocked it on the head now.....chilling in cabin and waiting for my call in a few hours when they put the drill back in... going to need to see if we can track it now weve made some changes.......

Above: BGS Rock Drill going for a swim. This bit of kit drills into the seabed to extract rock samples

Above: Room with a view...or should I say Cabin?!! View from my cabin as the weather is gets worse

Above: Deck operations during drill deployment

Above: BGS Rock Drill comes back onboard