14 June - Life beyond the microscope

  Ian Mills, SG1A on Discovery, here in the winch control cab, contributes today's blog.

Being a salty old seadog with a quarter of a century experience on many types and tonnages of ships, working on RRS Discovery has been something of a culture shock for me. I joined NMF as a temporary SG1A (Able Seaman in old money) in April and made permanent in December last year. This has been a whole new ball game with the diversity of work and also the social environment on board. My first major cruise was the Newfoundland /Greenland /UK trip last year which was mainly CTD water sampling but then onto a trials cruise off the Canaries which involved everything from towfish to RemoteOperatedVehicles to spar buoys, rescue missions from the deepest of depths with Hybis, even flying model aeroplanes off the bow in true Biggles fashion down to the dambusters theme tune playing in the background! It's a shame the plane had a watery end but the take off was very impressive! We are now back to CTD work on the normal 4 hours on 8 hours off 24/7 watch system. All quite mind boggling and nothing at all like six weeks painting decks on a slow steam to the Gulf on a VLCC tanker.

After the exhaustive 2 ¹/₂ weeks trial cruise where the winches were tested almost to their limits, everything seems to be running smoothly on the deck side. The CTD winch is operating wonderfully and the moorings operations have been a clean sweep with four out of four recovered. As long as the Gods stay with us on the weather side then this should be a huge success for all involved. (fingers, legs and anything else not nailed, screwed or glued down crossed please everyone!!!)

I have recently learnt that one thing us mere mortal deck apes should Never Ever do is ask a Scientist a technical question on what we are acheiving, I estimate that 10% of the answer will stick between the ears and be digested, the other 90% wiil fly very low over the close cropped barnet and embed itself in the person behind causing untold psychological scarring for life! Woe betide the unfortunate bystander!

The social side of the vessel is good even though limited by the round the clock operations, there is an excellent rapport between crew and scientists work wise, and friendly banter (though not technical banter due to threats of a visit to Davy Jones and his famous slop locker!), good music and some very confusing card games (now  we know what they all study at Uni eh???) on the down times.

It is a difficult time at sea, not just for myself but others as well with young families. We are on board as a crew for over nine weeks (unlike you part-timers, you all know who you are lol) and I know my children will be counting the days until Daddy gets home. My eldest daughter is 8 1/2, my demon son almost 3 3/4 and youngest daughter just approaching 1 1/2. Rhiannon stopped being a baby and became officially a toddler weeks before joining the ship so it is heart wrenching to leave but with contributing to this blog and my family perusing it, I'm hoping that my kids will have a better understanding of what Daddy does in his time away. In fact I am hoping my eldest daughter, Rebecca, will be able to persuade her Teacher in school to put the site on for the class as a 'hands on' Science and Geography lesson combined. As for my lunatic son, Rhys..... he'll just be well impressed that Dad’s piccie is on the 'compoota' screen from far away on the ship!

   Ian operating the CTD winch.

Before getting back to the drudgery of being housed in my rabbit hutch, sorry, winch control cab and hearing those fabled words "take it down to 2650 metres", we all wish our resident Motorman Duncan Lawes and his family congratulations on the birth of baby Ruby last month. I thought I'd left it late for sprogs (now being 43) but Duncan has beaten me hands down at nifty fifty for his firstborn.... good on yah Dunx. 

 Ian Mills SG1A