AMT Blog

When I finally came to this morning and began contemplating breakfast, I suddenly realised that during this trip I must have devoured the equivalent of a whole ‘dead pig’. Breakfast at home is two slices of ‘wholegrain toast’, a quick cup of tea and then out of the front door and off to work.

Starting work at 4:00 am and anticipating breakfast at 07:20 at the very earliest tends to focus the gastric pangs to an almost irrational craving. Suffice to say that when ‘dead pig’ is on the menu (and it always is for breakfast) it is a shame to ignore the choices on offer. We’ve had it all, bacon, sausages (various), liver, black pudding, white pudding, gammon, ham, roast pork, pork chops, meatballs and pork steaks and still it keeps coming.

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Captain stats

• Born 1956 in Barry, South Wales                  
• First went to sea April 1972 as a Catering Boy  
• Married to Carol in 1982
• 2 children: Gareth (25) and Carys (22)
• Lived in Wolverhampton since March 1980

Captain Roger Chamberlain

I have mostly liked my life on the high seas – visiting those places I dreamt about as a lad, meeting nice, indifferent, dour, menacing, jolly people along the way.

But what is the very BEST thing?

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Diary writing has never been a strength of mine and my intention to write regularly to this blog was always under threat. And so true to form I am sitting down to write this, my second entry in just over three weeks – about 10 days later than I had hoped for.

Cruise track showing sampling stations

Since the last time I wrote when we were approaching the Azores, we have transected the northern gyre of the Atlantic where surface seawater temperatures where in parts greater than 28°C, we have crossed the area of equatorial upwelling, which was coincident with heavy cloud cover and much to the delight of Marie Cheize (from the University of Brest )at times torrential rain. Marie is collecting aerosol samples and when possible rainwater for isolation of bacteria and determination of dissolved iron.

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There were some 20 or so members of the scientific party and ships crew who had never crossed the equator prior to this year’s AMT, including myself. It turned out to be a day that will live long in all of our memories and not merely due to the significance of such a traverse.

The day (7^th November) started much as any other with everyone busy conducting their respective science. However, there was an undertone of deviance resonating from the ‘Shellbacks’ (those who had crossed the line previously) leading to much apprehension on the part of the ‘Polywogs’ (those who hadn’t).

The Polywogs

We had no idea what was in store for us but made a collective decision that we would not succumb to our fate without a fight.

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Well we ‘crossed the line’ and it was the first time for many of us and we all had to pay homage to Neptune and his queen, pay our forfeits and celebrate with a beer. Then some bright spark came up with the idea of a charity head & beard shave after dinner. It’s amazing how close ‘friends’ can suddenly recall comments that were made when Noah was still waiting for rain. “You always said that if you did an AMT that you would shave” and the old favourite “Well it is for charity”. Moments of macho bravado fuelled by Plymouth gin over the course of very convivial evenings in pleasant company came rushing back to haunt me. A cold fear gripped me in areas that I thought redundant and I suddenly knew with great clarity how a cornered rat feels and that there is no greater laxative than fear.

Before

After

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Office of Origin: Davy Jones’ Locker Enterprises, Equatorial Monitoring Systems

To: Master, Royal Research Ship “James Cook”

Date: Friday 6th November 2009, 1300

Delivery by: Flying fish

MY SCOUTS REPORT THAT YOUR VESSEL IS PASSING OVER MY DOMAIN OF EQUATORIA WITH MARINERS THAT HAVE NOT PAID THEIR HOMAGE TO ME STOP BE PREPARED TO BE BOARDED BY MY SELF AND MY COURT FOLLOWERS DURING YOUR AFTERNOON 12 – 4 STOP WATCH TOMORROW STOP                       

 NEPTUNE REX (NNNN)

King Neptune - prepare to be boarded

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This is my second entry for AMT19 and I must confess that I’m not at my best first thing in the morning so I’ve waited until mid-morning to start this piece.  My alarm went off at 4:00am and I was already half-awake so switched it off.  Then with a start I sat upright in my bunk and it was 4:45am. I’d done it  – dropped off into a deep sleep again. Confusion reigned, two feet down, one leg of my jeans and the impossible struggle to understand why they had shrunk overnight on the back of a chair. I hauled myself up on deck for the pre-dawn CTD wondering why my tongue felt and tasted like a piece of old leather.  A cold claw of sleep craving  (and the need for coffee and bacon) was pulling at my insides and trying to drag me back to the cabin – so I went. I cleaned my teeth and re-surfaced to face another fine day.

Where’s the coffee?

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Generally speaking I’m one of those people who thinks of 4:30 as the hour before finishing work for the day or, on occasion, the time in the morning that my teenage son brings his Boeing Fiesta Zetec into land outside the house and gives the engine one torturous final kick, which rattles the windows in a 50m radius before the thing finally dies along with the Rap Band in the boot.

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This is  my second AMT, having participated on AMT-18 last year, doing essentially the same analysis with a colleague from PML but with a greater number of analysers. As I sit here, two/three weeks out of Falmouth waiting for the mid-day Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) sample, I take the opportunity to look though the port-hole of the Chemistry Laboratory at the sea with the sun reflecting off giving it a silver grey colour, PML and home seem like a different world.

Carolyn doing an early morning pre-run check on the nutrient analyser.

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