Published on August 5, 2016 in the OSNAP Blog R. V. Neil Armstrong was sitting on the Icelandic dock. Next to it, a little wooden Viking boat comes in and out taking tourists into the experience of sailing in these Nordic waters where puffins and seagulls take turns to fish in an ocean full of white and brown jellyfishes. On his right, the German ship Poseidon sits, and in front the Spanish B.O. Sarmiento de Gamboa. If we also count the two Icelandic research vessels on the port, it makes 5 research vessels on the same port. This is something unusual, not every day you can see so many high-tech research vessels together in the same dock.
I had the chance of visiting again the Spanish vessel with two American friends while it was on port. It is the same one that took me in 2011 across the 24ºN trans-Atlantic section and interestingly, it had the same crew and my old lab-mate and cabin-mate on board. It seems that we have all decided to move north. My Americans friends point out that the Spanish ship has a better coffee machine but a harder name. I must say that in both ships the food is amazing. Slowly, one after the other, all the foreign ships left Iceland, first B.O. Sarmiento de Gamboa, then Poseidon and then us. The weather since we left the dock has been AWSOME, incredibly calm and flat. I know, I never been before so further north (I’m originally from the Canary Islands) and maybe AWSOME is too much of a strong word, but the north has tough reputation, and right now the ocean is a glassy-smooth mass of water and I’m kind of expecting to see some whales with this weather. Right now we are on transit and tomorrow we will start to work, let’s hope that the weather decides to travel west with us! |
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