Date: 15.10.2021
Authors: Clara M., Dana
Position: Close to Vigo
Geographical Position: 42°41.4N , 009°39.2E
Etmal: 126 NM (total distance: 1312NM)

Before I came here I always wondered how much the weather at sea can change in less than 24 hours…
Well, this time it went from four meter high waves, a wind speed of more than 20 knots and a wind direction that made the ship lean that much to the side that you could hardly stand for longer than a minute, to almost no wind, a warm sun and water as flat as a mirror.

Even though there was hardly any wind, we still set some sails for training purposes and climbed the mast. This time some lucky ones were allowed to climb up to the Royal!

„Standing up there and only seeing the ocean and our wonderful Pelican was amazing, the coolest part was when an entire school of dolphins showed up!“

Dana

Since yesterday we have also been able to get our training books signed off for the basic knowledge about sailing and our day-to-day-life by the professional crew. The tasks are about things we’ve learned so far, such as helming, lookout and knots.

As soon as we have completed all three levels, we have taken a big step on the way of becoming sea farers.

We also used the good weather in the afternoon to finally do the first tests with the high professional CTD probe that has been sponsored to us by Daowan and Watertools.

The CTD probe measures and collects different data, but has only been used on still standing vessels so far, so we are the first people ever to be crazy enough to do it from a moving ship, which is why we came up with a plan: We attached the sounder to a buoy and the ridiculously long rope´ and let it into the water.

We received plenty of measurements on temperature, conductivity, pressure, salinity, density and sound velocity.
This data will be put on a website and can be used by universities and individuals, mostly scientists. We are going to take many more measurements throughout the journey and hope to do a lot of research with the data, which will hopefully help marine scientists and make an interesting science pathway topic for us at sea!

Note from Ocean College: A CTD probe is a standard instrument used by oceanographers to measure Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (derived from hydrostatic pressure), leading to the possibility to calculate additional environmental data like salinity, density and sound velocity. Thus this instrument delivers the fundamental water body properties over a depth profile in high resolution and accuracy needed in marine sciences to rate the conditions inside the water column. Knowledge obtained from CTD devices can provide a more detailed understanding of the ocean water’s characteristic through the entire water column, which is crucial for understanding the physics involved. The physics in turn allow biologists to understand why the biology is present or not present at different depths and why the chemical makeup of the water changes over depth. The CTD is the key to understanding the physics, chemistry, and biology of the water column.