60°S! After we gloated about our good weather fortunes last week, King Neptune returned the favor with a weekend blow: 25-30 Knot South winds, seas 10-15 ft were our new normal during the 14-16th. Although our transits were slowed, sometimes drastically, we continued operations. Since the 17th, however, we’ve been riding the Western side of a low (< 1000 mb) …

Two weeks into Leg 2 of GO-SHIP P18 2016/17, we’re at 47° 30’S, and the weather is NICE! Sun rises at 6:20, and sets at 9:45. Not that we haven’t seen some weather. We had a 48 hour blow (25-30 kts) over the 8th and 9th that tested our deploy / recover skills on the forward winch.

Prepared by Rolf Sonnerup We are now one week into Leg 2 of GO-SHIP P18 2016/17. About half of the scientific staff have changed hands. Sarah Purkey and I thank Brendan Carter and Annie Bourbonnais for remaining aboard to ease our transition, and in particular for leaving us with a crew of scientists in excellent spirits.nWeather must’ve been great. One …

Prepared by Brendan Carter   A map of our section with the yellow arrow highlighting what we’ve done this week. The thin black line at ~54°S shows the section of the Chilean EEZ where we are approved to conduct research. Leg 1 came to an abrupt end one day early after an unexpected Chilean clearance problem.nAs noted in the previous …

Prepared by Brendan Carter A map of our section, with the yellow arrow highlighting what we’ve done this week. We’re on fire! (Figuratively, of course.)

Prepared by Brendan Carter   A map of our section, with the yellow arrow highlighting what we’ve done this week. We have had another productive week.nWe crossed the Equator and started our journey across the Southern Hemisphere, completing 33 stations and the rest of our high-resolution Equatorial work in the process. We’ve had very few delays this week, and no …

Prepared by Brendan Carter A map of our section, with the yellow arrow highlighting what we’ve done this week. We have now emerged from the French and Mexican EEZs (red circles) with a complete set of measurements from each region.nFrench?nIn the middle of that circle we passed through is a small island claimed by France named Clipperton. It is still …

Prepared by Brendan Carter We are pleased to report that we are making our way south out of the Mexican EEZ and doing station work as we go.n We were briefly faced with the difficult decision between waiting on station and abandoning the work in the Mexican EEZ.n Some offshore islands make the Mexican EEZ more than twice as thick …

Prepared by Brendan Carter  After one more delay that pushed our sailing date back to 1500 on Saturday, Nov. 12th, we are excited and relieved to be underway. This was the original start of this report written on Nov. 13th. Unfortunately, we since returned to San Diego for diagnosis and repairs to the port Z drive. It was an approximately …

Prepared by Brendan Carter The first leg of the P18 GO-SHIP project was scheduled to begin Monday Nov. 7th, so I owe an update. However, is being saved for the day we depart from San Diego, CA for the first station on the P18 line at 110°W. Hence the delay of our start date owes to lingering mechanical issues on …