Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Super Busy.......

Wow, what a busy few days. Sorry no pixs today or yesterday, i'll try and remember to take some tomorrow to post. The last couple of days have been exhausting - setting up the equipment, supplies, organising things like berthing, watches....and utter mayhem. Due to an oversight (ha ha) at Raytheon, we have no MSTs (we should have 2), our MPC didn't arrive until last night and we had no MTs (we should have 4) until today (we only have 3). So poor Stian (who was MPC on the last cruise) has been being doing the job of MPC, MST and MT for the last few days - with only IT and ET people to help him onload and offload equipment (and since they don't really work outside, it was a lot more work, as none of them really knew how to deal with it). 

We've also had some mess ups - equipment and supplies missing, I had all my -80C samples from the last cruise brought over, but left on the truck for an hour before being loaded, so they had all pretty  much thawed (yes, ruining them), winches haven't been working and we haven't had the manpower to fix it as fast as it needs to be. Basically this all adds up to we're not leaving on time. The people we have had have been fantastic, but boy, did Ratheon screw us (and them) on this port call.......

And of course this means that Stian and I have had private time amounting to less than 24hrs (including sleep), and he flies off to California (and we hopefully pull out of port) friday morning....

Raytheon Glossary
MPC - Marine Projects Coordinator - does the main organising on the ship - goes between the science PIs and the ships Captain and crew. Basically makes everything work, or at least tries to. 

MST - Marine Science Technician - handles the inside science equipment and supplies (microscopes, water systems, chemicals, waste chemicals). 

MT - Marine Technician - handles the outside science gear - puts science equipment over the side, looks after all the major equipment. 

ET - Electronics Technician - deals with electronic stuff (wiring, cameras, etc)

IT - Information Technician - Deals with the ship email, intranet, data management etc. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my heavens! There is nothing that I can say except to send my best thoughts to both you and Stian and in fact, to all your crew!!! I do feel for the two of you tho of course, there is no way that I can fully appreciate all the problems you have encountered. Does this mean that you are short staff for the entire trip or that the appropriate staff is late in arriving???

Nicola said...

yikes. are they trying to bamboozle S into staying for this cruise too? and that SUCKS about your samples.

RGW said...

Stian tells me he hasn't been asked, which amazes me considering how much they like to screw people - but i'm glad, he really doesn't need this trip.

We're going to be really short staffed this trip - no MSTs is the most terrible (though only 3 MTs is also not great), I have many chemicals and many inside equipment they would usually take care of, instead it's up to me and my students........on top of trying to run a cruise, get samples etc etc...........yikes!

Leaving that much to do to so few port call staff is the most apauling though - we've written a strongly worded letter to NSF (funding agency) saying how wonderful our portcall people are, and how can Raytheon screw them over so badly.....

Anonymous said...

I wondered the same re Stian being asked to stay on--I am glad he is not. Greetings to both of you. I forgot to mention that I really appreciated your defining all the abbreviations. I hadn't fully realized the composition of the staff.

Have a good last few hours.

Rhian, I hope the trip itself goes smoothly and this become a good learning experience for your students.

RGW said...

Yup - as much as I would personally love him to stay as I'm going to miss him terribly (and he's really good at this!), i am glad he's headed home for a bit.

:0(