Free for all!

After some consideration I decided to put the full length version (40 min) of my Jan Mayen movie on the web for all to see. It was starting to decompose in my computer and really needed some fresh air so here you go, free for all! Please share the link to anyone who is curious too see it, you never know if I decide to pull it down from the web so hurry up and watch it :) I also just had it published in the news on two Swedish websites, Utsidan.se, and Freeride.se. Any other suggestions? The more the merrier.  To warm up, watch the Trailer if you have not already seen it. Then make sure to snuggle up with a warm drink and some seasickness pills readily available before you press play!



While on the topic of planting seeds, I have been busy lately - I present Gustav Garden Project 2.0! And just as last time when I started out putting a few plants to the ground it has quickly gone out of control. Why not make it just a little bit bigger? The bottom line is that I am probably quite bored at the moment and therefore have been putting the left over energy into gardening and mindless workout. But whatever it is I am having a good time. Next winter though - I hope I get out for some more adventures Jan Mayen Style. Minus the puking part.

A neighbor decided to take down his deck.
I capitalized on the free wood.

Raised Garden Beds
Vola! 

Not to happy that my avalanche showel
has turned into a useful garden device

Boom!
Including BMore Rat protection fence

My little darlings. One day they will grow up to become tasty veggies,
but for now I am tendering to their every need

Has this turned into a Gardening blog? Yes, most likely. Expect plenty of plant growing bigger pictures next time around. If you are reading this for the adventure part, next planned happening will be free-diving (and working) in Puerto Rico in the end of June.

The Wire Tour

Martin checking the action at the "low rises"

Back in Baltimore again. The Caribbean cruise came to an end after 1 month at sea, well 21 days if you count the sea days themselves. I was kind of dreading it before we started out, but it is funny how fast the time goes by and it really was a good time. If you are interested in more of the science we did, check out the NOAA Science Blog where Tim Battista wrote a more in depth story on what we did. 

Nancy Foster heading back to shore in full moon light,
with a successful mission behind her

With my feet firmly planted on land again I had a pleasent suprise this week. My friend Martin Edvall came to visit from rather cold Sweden. You might ask yourself why on earth Martin would be interested in coming all the way to Baltimore (surely it can´t only be my great baking skills, and spring has not quite yet come into full forse here to help warm up his cold winter bones). But then you don't know that Martin has not only watched every episode of "The Wire" Season 1-5 once, he has done it twice. Also I lured him here with the promise of some great canoeing. I took half friday off and we set out to follow a google map guide on my phone of must see places from the Wire Series. We had a great day exploring the less fortunate side of this town, but it is quite apparent that part of the real Baltimore is in an even worse state then what the series shows.

the real Baltimore, blocks after blocks with uninhabited houses
just a few hundred meters from Johns Hopkins Medical Campus.
Its somewhat hard to believe that we are still in the US.

Marios Court. Possibly not a place to dwell at night, but today
there was not much going on except for some Swedish tourist action

On Saturday we packed the canoe and headed for Potomac. I forgot to tell Anna there was going to be some rapids. She got wet, and somewhat upset. But then we had a great day in the blasing spring sun. I promised her I would inform her a bit more precisely what it would be like next time I took her in an open canoe through class 2 rapids... No camera out so you will only get the before and after pictures. 

Martin Anna, Austin and Laura getting ready for a ride on the river

Anna taking over the steering on her first, hopefully not last,  journey in the canoe

Campfire, chilled white whine and freshly baked bread.
The Caribbean in all honor but I  almost prefere a warming spring sun.  

No, it is not the caribbean. But it brought me pleasure to see how cold Austin and Martin were...

Yes. Freezing. 

The Great Falls, only 20 km from downtown DC. Pretty awesome place.
No we did not canoe here (last 20 years 53 pp have died trying)

Thanks for a great time Martin! Now back to the DC commute and a big pile of work at my desk. With spring around the corner I think there will be some good canoeing and fishing in the weekends up a head to keep it real. It's nice to be back, believe it or not. 

Failure

RIP sweet camera. August 2011- 25 March 2013. After 1.5 years of fateful service your partner send you 60 meter deep down in the ocean to explore an unknown shipwreck. You imploded from the water pressure and the failure of a third party lens port that cracked :( I just hope it was quick and painless. O well, I guess I have to upgrade to a lighter, thinner, better version of you. I hope you understand. 

A miracle and more then a little duck tape needed to fix it.
Even the memory card seems to be toasted

On the upside of things Wills camera held for the pressure (phew!) and we got some cool shots of the ROV exploring this previously unknown wreck.

A week ago we went into port for  few days of rest. The first day we had kids from 3 Schools in the Area visit us and learn about the ocean outside their coastline,  the science onboard, and how to drive the ship. Me and Will were assigned with the infamous survival suit training, once they started dancing Gangnam style with the suits on we know we had our success.

Kids Day!

A couple of hours later I picked up a young lady at the airport and we sneaked away for a few days in a small beach town an hours from San Juan. It was pretty great to get off the ship for a few days, and in style too. 

Our view from the Luqielo Sunrise Inn. Conveniently located right by the local surf break.. 

Me and Anna hiking to the top of El Younke Rainforest 1000 m over sea level.
Good to get them feet moving again

Sweet views of the rainforest and the ocean on both sides of the island once the clouds cleared

Not quite as adventurous as hiking in the costa rican rainforest
(nothing that eats you here), still pretty nice

I tried to smuggle Anna onboard to take her with me, but she got
booted off the ship once the sightseeing was done. 

San Juan harbor entrance. 

It's me and the birds again for another 5 days before this years PR ocean mission is over. Please stop snowing in Baltimore (they had a snowstorm today apparently). It is summer now! My friend Fredrik Schenholm might think otherwise, he is in Kamchatka trying to photograph skiing in front of/on a very active volcano at the moment. I highly recommend his blog if you want to take part of some of the action.

Seabirds patrolling our bow for hours waiting for the ship to scare up flying fish,
which they then had for an healthy sushi breakfast

Just another day

This Juvenile Booby Bird showed no respect for "our" territory, and
promptly made Nancy Foster its home for a day.

I later found him sleeping (and pooping) in a sun chair,
first thinking somebody forgot their feather boa (I know thats a
weird thought, but it was very dark...)  up there and almost picked him up.

It's pretty much the usual suspects out here. The birds, the whales, the sun, the ocean, the science team, the ship crew, the Swede. 

Never leave your camera behind. I should have learned by now. When this Humpback
Whale suddenly surfaced 20 meters from me I had the camera on the other end of the ship.
Managed to get this picture before it disappeared with a waving fin. 

Life on the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster has settled into its daily routines. Eat, eat, eat, watch a movie - repeat. For the Science crew that means seafloor mapping during the nights and ROV diving during the days. My shift ends in the early morning so I sleep until lunch, start my new day with a hefty meal, then check if there is anything exciting going on during the ROV dives, and if not I go up and digest my full stomach on the sun deck when the weather permits (yes, that is almost every day :).

Nick has a trustworthy beard and loves fishing,
needless to say high up on my favorite ship crew list 

Even though we work were we sleep, meaning you are always on call if need be, there is something pretty relaxing about being on a ship and not have to worry about anything except what is going on right here (minus a river of emails) right now. I wouldn't want to do this all the time, but for a change it really is a pretty nice life. On the other hand I have only been to the gym once here. I have found it way too easy to get yet another ice cream instead, or go and snooze away my constantly sleep deprived body. Probably a good thing we are moving into shore in a few days for a break.  

Inspecting one of two small gopro cameras I attached
on the ROV to film some of the action

Aside from the Habitat Mapping work I do onboard I have set out to capture some video from the life onboard (In the wake of my Jan Mayen movie screening in Annapolis I have mistakenly been assigned to be the ship videographer, they seems to be oblivious that I do not have any idea what I am doing). So I have started capturing some of the action on the ship, yesterday I strapped a my gopro camera on the ROV to get some shots of the ROV itself when it was working, turned out to be a great idea, and I even got the camera back in one piece. 

GoPro photo of the ROV working at 30 meters depth

Action in the ROV control room

Sloppy mappers (I am one of them) moving the lawn, i.e. watching multibeam  data come in

Another one of my "great" ideas is to capture time laps photography from different part of the ship. I hide my little camera in various locations to capture the life onboard over the span of a few hours. Not exactly what everyone want when they wake up to get a bit to eat and then realise they are on the candid camera. But what don't you do to get the good shots? Anyway, unless somebody is wise enough to throw my camera over board I will get you guys a little movie of "a day on the Nancy Foster" in due time.

Roger

Copy That

Mums

Yes, of course we have a golf car

Abandon ship(!) exercise just as I had fallen asleep. The night shift have its perks...

 Two days to we hit port, in a few hours we have some rock and roll weather coming up as we are leaving the shelter of Vieques Island where we have been hiding from the raging seas for the last few days. Time to catch up on that sleep...

Back on the sunny side

A good place to write when conditions are right

Under-stimulating winter in Bmore = done. Summer = start. It is time for the annual cruise to Puerto Rico. The weathered science team has gathered from various parts of the country to board NOAA Ship Nancy Foster for two 10 day cruises. This time around we are set to map the habitats in a new Marine Grand Reserve on the North East side of the island, a job that we started last year and hope to finish this year if things go as planned (they never do). I somehow managed to sign up for both legs and will hang around down here until the end of the month, I tried to complain to Anna that it was too long on the ship but to no vain (you are going to the Caribbean!). Being a good husband I did not leave her all alone with her exames, she has one of our best friends, Fia, visiting and will also come down here for a couple of days next weekend. That I look forward to.

Arriving a few days early I got a couple of good days cruising around western PR to visit a NOAA colleague and his wife, and also to get some surfing in before settling in to life on the small space of the ship. The girl at the car rental shop quickly convinced me that the 4 door car that I had ordered had been "upgraded" to a 2 door Smart Car, its a wonder what damage a smile can do to your brain. I must admit though that cruising with the tiny car on the highway was pretty exciting.

I was lucky with a nice ground swell, found a new spot to surf on the north west shore and finally got some rides after a long cold winter deprived of quality surfing and skiing. So relaxing! 

Rob and his wife Glenis showed me a great time, and also took me around to a coffee festival and the local beaches and bars.  Once back in San Juan we headed out to sea after a long evening at the local bars. This was punished with heavy seas, hangover mixed with seasickness at the same time as we had to do a lot of work. Some days you pay to be down here...

Tim and Chris warming up with some deck action working with the
ROV that we use to film the seafloor down to 300 meter depth

 Now this guy is on the way, bringing 5 meter waves on Saturday. That should get exciting. Also, our main engine is broken at the moment.

To be continued...

The end of a chapter - My movie is screening!

My new trailer for the world premier screening at Annapolis Film Festival 24th of March 2013

Almost two years ago I started this blog to cover a sail and ski expedition I did with a couple of good friends. Somehow (its all Fredriks fault) I ended up taking on the task to put all the hours of film material we had gathered into a movie. At least the attempt of doing one. In all honesty, it was never ment to be much more then a movie for ourselves to remember a fun trip from, and the material we had was pretty messy. But it was a good story, at least I think so, and the quality of the film clips were pretty good too. Me, Fredrik and Johan had set out with a simple plan to capture as much of the trip as possible as it happened, and one of our icelandic skippers Runar help out to. With the film quality you get with a HD capable dslr camera today (mirror less Sony Nex5 in my case) you can really do just that. In addition most people in our group were experienced adventures and set for a good show. Fredrik Schenholm who came up with the idea in the first place is an accomplished photographer who together with Martin Letzter (climbed Seven Summits among other things) had set out to publish an article about the journey in Swedish Outside Magazine, which they later succeeded with. So we had some pretty good shots to start with.

Still, if it had not been for me moving to the US with Anna, and as a result had to much free time on my hands with to little fun to kill it with (Baltimore isn't exactly a skiers or surfers mecca if you didn't already know) the first few months it would have stopped there. Instead it became "a bit" of an obsession for me to finish this film, and once I start something I usually don't stop until I really like the result. Many hours went into that. I don't really want to think about just how many. When I finally finished the movie I was so sick of it I did not ever want to see it again. I let it sit for more then half a year, then just to get it out of my mind, I picked it up this fall and brushed it up a little more (thats what my long commute is good for), and send it out to a couple of film festivals. Not that I thought it was going to get anywhere but I needed to finish the chapter one way or the other.

Last week I got the surprising but really great news that the movie have been accepted to the inaugural Annapolis Film Festival. I am very proud, surprised and happy about that! And really thankful to all the people who helped me (Anna has been very patient with me.., the crew, Fredrik and Johan, and Bob who gave me the right to use his awesome music to mention a few).

The screening is the 24th of March, which will be when I am out on the ocean outside Puerto Rico doing marine habitat research for NOAA again. A bit of a bummer I can't be there but Anna and some friends have promised to cover the event (and nobody seems to feel sorry for me as I will be down in the Caribbean...). Anyway, great to be able to close the movie chapter with an accomplishment for the hard work and move on to kill my commute time with other things - with 2.5 months of field time planned in Puerto Rico this year I am attempting to learn a few words of spanish (but I have been saying that for years now).

Anna, Linus, Lisa and Sixten in Baltimore Harbor

Other things that happened the last little while (I'm not so great at continuously updating my blog with everyday life event, I know..). Linus and Lisa, and their charismatic little one year old Sixten came to visit as a part of their honey moon. First time Swedish friends made it here so we were really happy they made it for some getto tours in Baltimore, and lots of wine and cheese evenings to catch up.

Baltimore going crazy as we won Superbowl. Cool time to be in town!

Sixten supporting the Ravens

Little early to start with the beer for Sixten, but ok, it is a special day

Anna showing her support

Lisa trying to hide from the moist Baltimore winter air

Linus and Sixten the bear enjoying
a sunny log at Gunpowder river

Great place to take a stroll with a baby! All credits to Linus and Lisa for staying
so mobile and adventurous with their kid. They traveled 6 weeks in the US
all in all. Not many people would take on the challenge as they did. I like!

Our basement hotell! 

Anna made me some sweet Fat Tuesday buns for Valentines (Ok, I take responsibility for the rasberries). I felt sorry for Andrew missing out and made him a special design!

In two weeks its time for some adventures with NOAA again, stay tuned!