Arriving Rhode Island

Newport in sight! 

My time on the big blue has come to an end. We just arrived in a beautiful fall day to Rhode Island, Newport, yesterday after two weeks of exploring and transiting up long the US east coast. This is Okeanos home port which she has been waiting 2 years to arrive to (long story apparently) so everyone was really exited to get here. Myself I was mainly tired as I had to extend my night shift to cover another day, although the excitement snuck up on me too eventually.

Crew of Okeanos Explorer fresh off the ship

Looking back we were lucky to escape the Atlantic in the middle of the hurricane season with just a few rocky days. The work onboard have followed a well organized daily routine that have also provided time to get to know the ships crew better (aka daily Call of duty tournaments), fishing off the stern and watching important movies such as "life aquatic", highly recommended if you have not seen it.

We had a US coast guard sail ship visiting outside the Maryland coast

For the mapping part I have got to know beautiful Baltimore Canyon - in the "lower" part town as well as a quite impressive transect along the US coast. We never found that sub, neither did we find any more major ship wrecks then the one in Florida straight. guess it takes lots of time and some luck to locate historical ship wrecks in deep water.

My watch stander mate Ash during a rare moment of daylight

Our chef enjoying the cooler weather up on deck

Newport seafood will have lots to live up to, and the view...

Despite my continuos effort of utilizing all the collected data I didn't catch a single fish, though the time spend on deck have been well rewarded with daylight, pilot wales and dolphin sightings. The last night before we hit port we had a pod of dolphins riding the bow with bioluminescence making the charismatic mega fauna glow in the dark.

I dont normally fancy photos of the sun, but there is something irresistible about sunrises....

After packing up today Meme, Adam and I went to Rhode Island University and got a tour of the Inner Space Centre  that is the main hub for communication, live feeds and data transfer from Okeanos Explorer. This enables scientist from all over the world to take part live during the operations on Okeanos, pretty cool. What was even more cool was that we called up EV Nautilus (check out http://www.nautiluslive.org/), that is currently doing ROV operations on a mud vulcano outside Spain feeding National Geographic with images, and had a crystal clear live HD video call with them via satellite link from the production and control room at Rhode Island. Weird that it works, and so cool (did I say it was it was cool?).

Just moved in to "the cave" in Newport. Already feels like home. 

Now two days of sightseeing in Rhode Island before heading back to Baltimore on Saturday evening. I just arrived at my hostel in Newport, still jet lagged from turning my hours around. I like what I have seen so far, sailboats, lots of pubs and surfing beaches around the corner to explore tomorrow. I am the only gust here right now and the house lady put me straight in what she referd to as "the cave". Time to shave. Good night.