Temp: 44 F  Weather 80% sun, 15 kt winds

Departure Day. The ship was due to leave the harbor at 1000, but that was before a recurring engine problem pushed our departure back to 1300. In the meantime we were trained. On everything you can think of. 

[See a map of the voyage.]

Marine toilets, trash and food waste, proper galley attire, how to walk about the ship safely, cleanliness in shared quarters, accessing internet, muster stations, life raft deployment, donning a survival suit, seasickness, and man overboard and fire drills. Oh, and let’s not forget the discussion about ship-board romance. That is strictly not allowed—nothing so much as a phone number exchange until the ship has returned to shore.

A few miles out of Dutch, we spent over an hour turning in circles to calibrate the navigation system. Then several miles after that we spent a couple hours watching a Coast Guard helicopter practice landing on the ship, taking off, circling, and landing again; they even refueled in mid-air. Andy, the other seabird observer, and I did some training ourselves—on survey protocols and data entry. The seabird observing was interspersed with blows of humpback and fin whales, with the occasional breach of a humpback in the distance, and a mother and calf passing nearby the ship. Later in the evening we had one more meeting among the scientists to get acquainted with each other’s research and not long after that it was time to turn in for the night.

So by dusk, we hadn’t made it very far from Unalaska Island, but just far enough for it to fade into the distance and out of sight. I’m getting rocked and rolled to sleep tonight with my motion sickness bracelets tightly around my wrists, as the 12+ foot swells of the Bering Sea tell me the adventure has begun.