After a week of reading instrument/software/hardware manuals and practicing operating the various winches/instruments that I will eventually use on the Lake Guardian, my first test was an easy one. A group of 7 recently graduated/Ph.D/Masters civil engineers from Purdue made their way aboard for a couple of days in the exact middle of Lake Michigan.
My first shift was uneventful. Due to weather, the captain had called off all activities from 12am-6am at least (the duration of my watch)...the challenge was staying awake. The second shift (6pm-12am)...their SCAMP instrument managed to get caught on the underside of the boat...then it started to pour...aside from listening to the BRUINS WIN THE STANLEY CUP...the rest of the shift was just as slow as the first. When I had awoken, the sun was out, the SCAMP was freed, and come 12pm, I was called into action. My role was to drive the Rescue boat (Vega) with 3 scientists aboard (along with the SCAMP and AUV) towards their selected GPS coordinates as they took their measurements. Thanks to 30 minutes of smallboat training two days prior, I handled this like a champ, and everything went smoothly, even when the fog was so dense I had a 10m sight radius.
Along with the smallboat chauffeuring, I was given duties practicing preparing and deploying the SeaBird, a contraption with multiple instruments used for taking chemical/physical properties and samples of the water column. This involves steady use of the winch and knowledge of the computer software that records the data taken by the SeaBird.
After the fun in the Vega was over, we steamed back to Milwaukee, where we will be until the Lake Erie dissolved oxygen survey starting on the 21st of June.
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