We are through the first quarter of our trip and everything is going as planned, from the work perspective, our cold weld method is working and we are sampling as much as we can – until we run out of copper, that is, and for the trip itself it has been Living up to its hype.
The scenery is captivating, not much wild life though but watching icebergs on the horizon and a twenty four hour sun is for sure a new experience. The first few days for me, who has not been on an ocean cruise before, were hard because of the waves and ship motion throwing me around while I slept but now that we are surrounded by sea ice there are no such waves and I hardly feel the ship motion.
Calm sea, sea Ice and a Iceberg
About the work hours we decided not to do shifts because of irregularity of when our sampling stations come along, it turned out to be a good decision as we are enjoying the cruise and doing the work at the same time.
The cold weld method turned out to be a success albeit a very sensitive one to the human element, we are still tweaking with it, we started out at 60% success ratio and right now we are around 90%. Small things can make a huge difference like how we hold the tubes or how long we apply the pressure to the weld area. Hopefully we should be able to iron out the minor problems and get to 100%.
Will be uploading more of these entries.