Another day just sitting around in port waiting for interesting things to happen. I think I have failed so far to give some important details about the quality of life on the ship, so I'll fix that now. While in port, we can't dump any waste water, so we got this fun note posted on our doors: This was written by a man who is not on day three of his period, so I'll tell you we're still flushing. But it does mean we're all getting stinky. So I went on a sidequest, where a bunch

Okay, yes and no here, but you can't blame a gal for trying to be dramatic in this clickbait culture. Anyways, first thing this morning while still heading into port, the fire alarm goes off. We haven't had drills yet so everyone is unsure if this is real or what to do. But being good sailors we head to our muster stations to wait for more information. While we were outside we got to see a rainbow, so I think it was a rainbow alarm instead of a fire alarm. It turned out that

This post is coming in a bit late, because I finally moved onto the ship (yay!) But the bummer was that I was relentlessly seasick and completely incapable of looking at a screen. Hopefully that was the last of it and we ease in to the rest of the cruise. We're actually heading back into port as we speak so it's calm for now. You may be confused as to why we're going into port when I left yesterday, so I will do my best to explain the timeline and give an idea of why everythi

Don't let the title fool you, nothing exciting is happening. I stopped by the ship today while it's in port to chat with some of the scientists, figure out logistics, and start organizing the wet lab. Not too much to report on that front, but here's your first look at the old lady: The wet lab is where I'll be doing all of the sample data management work. You'll be seeing much more of it over the next month, but here's a teaser: So for the time being, I don't have much to do.

Thank you for joining me as I adventure across the South Pacific Ocean in this highly anticipated blog. Taking inspiration from my dear grandpa, who has diligently blogged all of his cycling expeditions, I thought this would be a fun way to keep everyone involved. For 29 days I'll be sailing around the Cook Islands, helping to preserve and catalog samples collected by the ship from the deep sea. For those who don't know where the Cook Islands are, they're here-ish: Until the