Weather: Force 4/5

Location: North Atlantic not near anywhere!! Heading to Arran

Food: Chinese Night

Ahh last night was one of those fun nights that make going to sea interesting. The storm eased slightly towards the evening and downgraded to around a 7/8. The ship however altered course and was knocked about a lot. The rolling was quite extensive and nobody really got a good night sleep. people ended up sleeping on the floor and various other places. I ended up putting my lifejacket under one side of my mattress to stop me rolling around in my bunk. Everyone woke up with aching backs and bags under their eyes. The general consensus from those on the bridge last night was that it was bad and that the ship got hit by some pretty big waves - I, like most people felt these as the reverberated through the ship.

This morning saw the weather ease off a lot although during the morning meeting the Captain joked that it would be easier to list the places where the Gales weren't than where they were. Everywhere up here is relatively bad. It was decided to turn the ship around and head back into sheltered waters where hopefully we could conduct some science - we haven’t managed to do any drilling for a number of days. We are going to head towards the Isle of Arran and possibly retrieve some moorings if the Captain gets clearance. These are instruments that are anchored on the seabed and measure currents and temperatures.

I spent the morning pottering around the ship and managed to get our wave radar working - a device used for detecting wave height, frequency, direction etc. This would have been useful last night to see how wild things were getting. This equipment is stored in a really low-ceilinged area known as the "Hobbit Space" - which did my aching back no end of joy!!

It was decided just after lunch to attempt a deployment of the drill - the weather conditions were marginal for deployment with a significant wave height of 3.4m which increased to just under 4m. The depth was around 960m and thus required the USBL which i fired up and attempted to track the rig as it descended. The rig was placed in the water and began its descent - no tracking. The deployment was halted shortly after as the weather conditions once again deteriorated and communication with the rig was not at its optimum.

The rest of the afternoon was spent developing software and buying chocolate from the bond.

Currently in-transit to next drill site........ Up at 6am

Rock Drill comes back on board after abortive deployment. During the first 20 minutes of deployment the wave height increased by nearly a metre

Nothing stands in the way of Chris and the Playstation - not even a force 10.

Never sneeze on a radar........ This is our wave radar - all the green smudges are waves!!!

The Engineers office got trashed during the force 10.... or so they say.....