Today was a quiet day for some of the Cabled Array Team. Many of us have been working very long hours getting ready for this expedition. So, we took opportunity of the ~36 hr steam to Slope Base to catch up on some much needed sleep, being lulled to dreams by the gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) rolling of the ship. The engineering team used the transit to prepare the junction box and attached instruments that will soon be installed at Slope Base. Some of the students were out early morning helping the engineering team with this preparation, others worked on their blogs, and got used to the ship motion. The ROPOS team readied the vehicle and conducted predive checkouts for the upcoming dive. ROPOS's first exercise will be to take the junction box to near the seafloor at a water depth of 2900 m to stretch out the new umbilical for ROPOS. Perhaps, two trips will be made to over 10,000 ft to insure that the cable is fully stretched, ending with installation of the junction box and instruments, and recovery of the junction box that was installed and has been operational since summer of 2014. Tomorrow will be an exciting day! The first turns of the science pods on the Shallow Profiler moorings.
