21.01.2013 (Monday). Weather cooler,
with a very light rain in the morning. It is only at 10:30 that the ship will
leave Cabo Negro for Punta Arenas.
Meeting in the conference room at 09:00: it seems that the ship will have stay
at Punta Arenas
for days in order to close the opening above the hold. This would be a terrible
waste of time. Fortunately a solution is found later on, and the hold is
closed. We could not say exactly how because we were extremely busy at that
time. Julian Gutt just told me that the crew used a technique of the good old
days, which is transmitted from mouth of sailor to ear of sailor. At 10:30, the
dry labs are attributed to the scientists. Marie and I gets the lab E-530 (left
side of the ship), which is the same as I used with Henri Robert six years ago.
A good point is that we do not have to share it with a third person. So we will
have no problems of place restriction. However the development of spontaneous
disorder is a phenomenon, which we will have to keep under control. In the
afternoon, we have to remove all our boxes and gear out of the container in the
deepest part of the hold, transport them through a narrow and steep staircase
and bring them either in our small dry lab or in the big wet lab. Our boxes are
opened and with some exceptions their content is removed and arranged in our
dry lab. The empty boxes are put in a container for storage. I check if our
plastic barrels for transporting our samples by World Courrier have their UN
marking. They have them! I am relieved. At the same time, some colleagues mount
tables in the big wet lab, to be used by all scientists. Everything has to be
fastened with ropes, because the ship will be moving (we expect a small storm
when we will leave the Strait of Magellan).
Our work is quite a hard, because we have many things to do in very little
time. The empty boxes are put into an empty containers. We finish to work around 23:30 but the job is
done. Both of us have done his/her best.
Removing the boxes from the container.
Our boxes in our lab.
(Cédric)
We get up every
morning around 7h-7h30 for breakfast. Some good news are quickly spreading
among us: we’ll leave tomorrow around 8h and we’ll leave towards the west,
inside the Magellan
Strait, which is unusual.
Some people tell me the landscapes are much more beautiful this way and
everyone’s quite excited about this decision. During the afternoon, we are busy
with some physical exercise: we have to bring our equipment boxes from the deep
container to our wet and dry labs. The boxes are heavy, but we are a lot of
people cooperating. When every boxes have been moved upstairs, every group can
take care of its own. We open them and try to put the pieces in a practical
spot, in our assigned lab. We have a dry lab for the 2 of us, quite close from
the common wet lab where all the benthos groups will gather to sort the samples
out.
Then we have to tie
everything up because the meteorologist is announcing a rougher sea in the
coming days, and a non attached object could fall and break with the movement
of the boat. The dissecting microscope and the lamps, but also the centrifuge,
vortex and incubator for the DNA extractions are fixed on the lab table with
ropes. As much pieces as possible are put in the drawers and the remaining
boxes are fixed on the ground. This work keeps us busy until late in the
evening, but we go to bed happy from the perspective of departure and ready to
sail the moody ocean!
(Marie)
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