24 January 2025
An alarm went off at about 5:20am this morning. It’s not a drill—there’s a door to the outer decks left open, which triggers an emergency muster. The crew rushes to their muster stations to ensure everyone is accounted for. The drill is quick, but important. It’s a safety protocol to determine whether anyone might have fallen overboard or if the situation is something else entirely. After the all-clear is given, we’re able to get back to bed. But, for some of us, it’s already time to get up.
I’ve been awake, so I decided to join in the Early Morning Activities (EMAs), which are meant to be light exercise. Today’s session is led by one of the dive team members, who’s set up a big square on the flight deck. The goal: run around the square, and every two minutes, do a set of burpees, increasing by one each time. That session was insanely hard and was my first EMA session on this voyage. My knees are bruised and I’ll gladly take the two days to recover.
After lunch, the crew and I head to the bridge to troubleshoot some equipment. Oscar, Pete, and I are working to get the WaMos system up and running. The WaMos system measures wave height. I’ve learned a lot about this system over the past few days, though I’m still only scratching the surface, considering the size of the manuals.
Yesterday, I had a small panic moment when the main screen turned black with a “No Connection” message. It turns out I had accidentally disconnected the Seaview software from the Rutter Server, but after some tinkering, I was able to reconnect everything and restore the radar picture. It turns out I had accidentally disconnected the Seaview software from the Rutter Server, but after some tinkering, I was able to reconnect everything and restore the radar picture. Today, we’ve managed to sort through more of the system’s issues, and we’re letting it run for a while to gather data. Fingers crossed we’ve made some progress eliminating the error messages.
The ship is currently navigating in a large square pattern outside the harbour, just waiting for the time to start our pilotage into port. Since we’re near land, our phones have finally picked up a signal, so there’s a brief window of connection. The real challenge of the day began when we started to pilotage through "The Rip. " After that, we’ll make our way to Geelong.
Oscar’s been assigned sentry duty while the ship refuels in Geelong tomorrow, and the Ice Pilot (to help the ship navigate icy waters) will be coming on board. There are two possible paths for us. One where we head East and hide out of very bad weather for a day behind Auckland Islands. Or the Direct Path, where we skirt the edge of weather and just boost it straight down, timing it as the weather passes by.
- Sara