Feast

Most of the excitement yesterday revolves around food. Again, I can't comment on breakfast (but not for long probably! This is my last midnight shift woo!), but lunch was one of my favorites! Fish tacos and kalua pork quesadillas. So delicious. They were accompanied by red beans and rice, refried beans, and jalepeno poppers, not to mention a dollop of yummy guacamole :)

Dinner last night was Thanksgiving in October! The cooks must be reading our minds, because McCall and I have lately been discussing the holidays during our Salty Stitching sessions, and commenting on how much we love Thanksgiving fare. It had everything. Roast turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes (the variety with marshmallows on top), steamed veggies, cranberry sauce, and potato rolls. I took this as a Thanksgiving warm up, so in order to be prepared for the real holiday I had to practice going back for seconds on turkey, sweet potatoes and stuffing. No Thanksgiving meal would be complete without PUMPKIN PIE! McCall and I decided they were tiny slices so we just HAD to have two, plus Julia and Dayanthie didn't have a slice so SOMEONE had to eat theirs! So so good. I couldn't have been more excited about that meal! I'm seriously going to leave this ship overweight. McCall and I hope to get our butts on the rowing machine this afternoon.

Lots of excitement is about to ensue today. We should be recovering our first OBS in a little less than 8 hours. We should arrive on site around 5:00 am local time, upon which time we will communicate with the instrument and tell it to burn off it's anchor. It will rise through the water at a rate of about 40 m/min. This instrument is sitting at about 5994 m depth, so it will take approximately 2 - 2.5 hours to get to the surface. Then, we play the waiting and watching game, and once it is spotted, the captain will back up the boat toward the instrument, but not too fast as to run it over or let it get thrashed onto the side of the boat by the swells. The OBS techs will then use a hooked pole to get a handle on the instrument, and I'm not sure how we get it on board after that. I think a crane is involved. I'll have a better description tomorrow after I've witnessed this happen. It is going to be tricky, I'm glad I'm not the one in charge! Our jobs will be to take detailed notes about when and where everything happens, and get the poles out of the way of the people on deck once they are done with them.

So, it's going to be a long day for me. I guess it's good I got a huge meal last night! I'll get off at 2 am (Julia and I are working half shifts again), go back to bed until around 7 am and start helping with the recovery. Then I'm on shift again at noon to 4 pm, and since we are switching shifts I will also work 8 pm to midnight so the other two can take over their first midnight shift tonight. If all goes well, we should be doing about 3 recoveries every 24 hours, so we will be quite busy from here on out! Wish us luck today!