Victory lap

Free vehicles for the win.

Every time I check our coordinates on the lab monitor, the latitude is just a little bit higher. Every time I walk outside, the air seems just a little bit cooler.

We're heading back to San Diego now, and if you think the transit is taking longer than it did on the way out, you're right. We actually stopped and sampled another station on the way, because we finished our regular sampling two days early. Better said, the cruise had two weather days built in that we didn't have to use, so we filled the time with extra sampling. A victory lap, if you will.

Ain't what she used to be

This cruise has been extremely productive - actually, it's the most productive cruise I've ever been on. We had perfect weather the whole time. We had no major catastrophes, and we didn't even lose any gear (both of which are completely normal). For the free vehicles alone, we had 45 deployments. Forty-freaking-five, and not a single free vehicle lost. We actually took a photo of the free vehicle team to commemorate our success. That's the plankton pump lander I'm sitting on, and the broom in Oliver's hands is supposed to show that we made a "clean sweep" of the cruise.

I'll spend the last few days of the cruise packing things up and getting them ready to ship. Andrew has an entire shipping container going back to Norway, so it needs to be filled with our gear. We've taken most of the instruments off of the lander at this point, so she's just a skeleton on the deck. It's a bit sad to see everything come down and get packed into boxes, but I know it has to be done.

I'll catch up with you when we get back to land. For now, I'm just enjoying the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and the slow end to a very successful cruise.