A taste of life at sea

This is the first day out at sea, and so far it has been good. The ship is steadily rocking back and forth a bit, not uncomfortably so and I've experienced no seasickness but the constant motion apparently makes me very tired. At the end of the workday I fell asleep at 20.00.

We are currently two days behind schedule which means we will have to skipp one short duration station of sampling and tomorrow will be a test station for everyone to make sure their equipment and methods are in working order. So the day after tomorrow we will, after two days of transit at sea from Nouméa, have our first short duration station.

When it comes to life on the ship it has been both good and bad, simple and difficult but the overall impression is positive. The cabins are nice and spacious, the lab space is alright and the restaurant serves really good food (the french are seriously passionate about their food). In addition to that we also have a lounge, a tiny gym, a large conference room with stationary computers and a laundry (not that I've had the time to actually benefit from either though).

Internet is likely going to stay patchy at best since we are all sharing the same limited bandwidth, which is a huge letdown for me since I was hoping to be able to communicate back home using Skype (which was originally promised). This information leaves me with a feeling of isolation and a knot in my stomach which I will have to deal with. I sorely miss just hearing the voice of my fiancée already and it has just been 3 days since we last spoke. It seems like we have access to a satellite phone on board but I don't know the exact price for calls to Sweden (it's about 7 SEK/min to France), but it's a solution to my dilemma, which I don't know how to cope with at this time.

So on a more humorous note, I've had my biggest french stereotype confirmed this first day at sea! It is both a laughing matter and a matter of frustration. It seems like we are only 5 non-french speaking people on board who most french speakers have no respect for whatsoever. All communication and information is in french (even today's safety information and drills) and you really have to pull the english out of them (a few exceptions occur, thankfully). Some people in the crew don't even speak or understand english.

The food is a holy grail to them and we actually have a waiter serving us our meals, which typically is a 3-course meal two times a day (lunch and dinner) and then breakfast of course. The downside to it is that they have lunch at 11.00 and then dinner at 19.00 (bloody 8 hours between meals!). The only thing I can do about that is stack up with fruit during the previous day and rely on my diet supplement that I brought. Oh, and on the food; they eat baguettes and cheese for every meal, every day and even though it is against international rules at sea, they still serve wine at lunch and dinner. I don't even drink wine.

The weather is nice though. Saknar dig älskling.