Matthew's Journal

Good morning everyone. I writing this from on board the Ronald Brown while I'm strapping down computers in my work area in preparation for today's sea trial. The agenda for today is fairly simple and the boat is fairly quiet since all of the science crew isn't on board yet. The agenda: we secure equipment, have a safety briefing, load some equipment, turn the ship and load more equipment, and then we sail out of the harbor for a few hours and make sure everything works.

We just finished our safety briefing. The purpose of the safety briefing was to educate us on where to be in an emergency. For a fire I have to muster in the main lab. If I have to abandon the ship, I'm in life raft 5 and I muster on the aft fantail. The most entertaining part of the safety briefing was trying on immersion suits. Immersions suits are designed to keep you alive in cold water and they're basically very thick wetsuits. When you put one on you can start to appreciate what it must feel like to be Gumby. You'll understand what I mean when you see the picture below.

Anyway, I have some tasks to attend to, so I'll post a run down of the sea trial later today or this evening.

Me, trying on an immersion suit.