During our stay in my hometown of Ottawa, I visited RBR, where I worked for 22 years before retiring and sailing away. There were pleasant meetings with my colleagues and a warm welcome in the Calibration lab. I made a presentation “One Year under the Sail for Science”, in which I talked about the results of our year-long voyage. I brought with me our CTD measuring system for recalibration, which the company President Greg Johnson offered to do for me free of charge, and with gratitude handed it over to the Calibration lab. I was glad to participate in this process, having personally calibrated the conductivity measuring channel. “Post-cruise” recalibration of the CTD measuring system is an important part of the quality control of the data collected during the expedition, allowing to estimate the errors of the collected data. This recalibration confirmed the high quality of the metrological characteristics of the RBRconcertoCTD system. Now our CTD measuring system is again ready for measurements in the next expedition season. Thank you, RBR!
Presentation “One Year under Sail for Science” at the RBR Lunch and Learn Me with CTD at the Conductivity calibration bathJun Wang with my CTD at the temperature calibration stationYassine Toba is processing calibration data for my CTD. That was my workplace for many years!Aman Kaur is doing Winkler oxygen determination for DO calibrationDanny Lang is in charge of pressure calibration
We are pleased to announce a generous sponsorship gift to our project from Guildline Instruments—a package of IAPSO Standard Seawater! We will use it in future expeditions to ensure the quality control of salinity determination with our CTD measuring system, using control samples measured by the onboard Micro-salinometer MS-310. IAPSO Standard Seawater is crucial for calibrating salinometers and is an internationally recognized standard in oceanography for determining practical salinity. Guildline proudly serves as its distributor in the Americas.
Moreover, Guildline is the manufacturer of Autosal and Portasal salinometers—renowned for being the most accurate salinometers in the world. During our visit to Guildline, we had the pleasure of meeting our former colleague Metrologist Kai Malorny and the company’s President Richard Timmons. Richard graciously gave us a tour, showing us both the production and service facilities, as well as sharing the latest developments. It was fascinating to see one of the first potentiometers, developed by T.M. Dauphinee more than 70 years ago, on display in the company museum. This development laid the foundation for the Autosal salinometer, invented and created by Dauphinee in 1973 and still produced with some modifications by Guildline as the industrial standard in oceanographic salinometry. Today, Autosal’s prototype is even featured in the Canada Science and Technology Museum!
This visit was particularly meaningful for me, as it marked the start of my Canadian career 22 years ago. I was delighted to witness Guildline’s steady development, maintaining its reputation over 60 impressive years! To commemorate our meeting, Richard presented us with a bottle of his signature Timmons Estate Port, made by him using a unique process. I’m confident that the “presidential” standard of winemaking will pair beautifully with the standard seawater!
Cheers to the highest standards of Guildline!
With Richard Timmons in the Guildline’s museumDauphinee potentiometer ca.1950sOn the production floor with a new Autosal in assemblyTimmons Estate Port vintage 2020
After more than a year of sailing, we’ve reached the hurricane-free shores of Trinidad. Here in Chaguaramas, near Port of Spain, we’ve hauled out our boat at Coral Cove Marina for painting, repairs, and refitting. We’ll use this break to travel to Ottawa to see our family, especially our much-missed grandchildren. This time will also allow us to process the data we’ve collected, perform quality checks, and calibrate our CTD measurement system to ensure the accuracy of collected oceanographic data. Once this assessment is complete, the data will be transferred to the Ocean Database. In October we’ll return to Trinidad to continue our project and our adventures. Stay tuned!
