#8 TROUBLE ON BOARD


“Cruising has two pleasures. One is to go out in wider waters from a sheltered place. The other is to go into a sheltered place from wider waters.”
– Howard Bloomfield




26'27" N 
48'22" W
July 4, 2001 14:40 (ship time)

The bright blue is gone from the sky.
A grey canopy drapes the horizon and lends a completely different feel to the whitecaps marching in from the SW. We have a 5' SW swell running w/ 10-12 knots of wind from the same direction. The ship is rolling 5-8 deg. every 5 sec. We're booking for Barbados with long faces and heavy hearts.  Yesterday, in sunshine and bright moods, we set up at Dusty 1, for retrieving our first sediment trap. This had been deployed in January, 2000 and was one of two major stops on our cruise.

The "mission impossible" box was brought up on deck, a cable with sound transducer was lowered over the stern and a signal was passed to the release device on the bottom of the sea.  Though  a positive response was issued, the device never released.  There are two failure modes, one the floatation devices connected to the trap had imploded due to the extreme pressure at 2 miles down and the trap was lying in a pile on the ocean floor, or the release mechanism had failed or was otherwise stuck.  While we discussed our options, and attempted some sonar scans to see if we could verify the trap was in an upright position, the captain approached and notified us that there was a medical emergency aboard and that we needed to proceed to a hospital. The captain has a medical consultant service available by satellite phone, and has been in contact with them concerning the condition with the recommendation being head to the closest hospital. 

There are two fairly distinct camps aboard. Science and Crew. Science is aboard for a set time, kind of renting the ocean based laboratory. The ship is Crew's life, career, family, and
living.  In these situations, anything restricting science from achieving their goals is serious business. The time on the ship may have taken years to schedule, and years of experiments may be tied up in the short period available for research activities.  The Captain would not reveal the identity of the sick individual. All science realized it was a crew person. Science never understood that the Captain had not revealed the identification of the subject to the crew either so the crew, knowing their own, and realizing everyone was still manning their shifts, realized it was a science person.  A day has passed and enough crew and science folks have talked that we all now know no one knows. So a mystery has developed and I've just heard from a crew member that odds are being calculated on various members.  As the ship docks, there will only be one person not lining the rail, watching who is about to leave. And that’s going to be the one with the medical problem.  We are all wondering what kind of medical problem would enable one to continue to show no signs, but require a special four day run to the nearest land.  
Now with no work to do, and constant steaming to the SW, there is nothing left to do but read, read, read. Good thing I brought 15 books. 

On the road to Barbados

Your correspondent
David

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