How sailing can help with the ocean data collection
More miles, bridges and locks were passed. One of desired colours of light was green, especially on entry of locks and drawbridges. Today we passed two Canadian locks (Upper and Lower Beauharnois) with 40ft level drop and 2 drawbridges with 40m bridge’s rise. The end of the second day was on the mooring with a nice sunset view. The colour of the light was acceptable red!
After two months of work preparing the sailboat for a voyage, packing our house, and instruments for measurements, finally, the day has come – today, the 16th of July we set sail from the Crysler Park Marina on a long voyage. Hurray!!!
At the first stage of our voyage, we must pass the St. Lawrence River, with all its locks, past Montreal, Quebec City, the Saguenay River, Gulf of St. Lawrence and reach our first goal – Nova Scotia.
Great help in the preparation of the boat was done by Steve, who saw us off, and Frank, who is sailing with us – many thanks to both, dear friends!
Also, my big thanks to the RBR’s staff Ariel, Jon, Tekai, and Minh to help with the last-minute updating of my CTD with the Tridente sensor! You made it!
Thanks to the Crysler Park Marina for keeping us over winter and almost two months in the dock!
Thanks to The Chandlerry staff, for helping us with purchasing equipment and providing a good discount!
Thanks to our family and friends for supporting us all this time!
The Christening ceremony of our sailboat took place on July, 2nd in the Crysler Park Marina with the presence of our family and friends. Following the tradition, we remembered the glorious past of this yacht, which circumnavigated the world in the 1980s-90s under the skipper Sean Johnston. Also following the tradition, I had to drown a piece of the sailboat’s name artifact that remained on board – we found only a ceramic plaque with a mule riding spallpeen. Goodbye, Spallpeen!
Because seawater is our subject to study, during the Christening ceremony instead of a bottle of Champagne we decided to break a bottle of Standard Seawater, aged for 21 years (as long, as I worked at RBR). Iryna performed this operation flawlessly, sprinkling the bow of our sailboat with real standard seawater from the first attempt! After that, I uncorked a bottle of our homemade red wine with the “Sail for Science” label and shared it with Poseidon, Neptune, Nymphs, Mermaids, and our friends and family. The kids got a fuzzy-bubbly kombucha.
Cheers! Godspeed OCEANOLOG, Fair Winds and Following Seas!
