Dave and Brian's Excellent Adventures

Day 7 - The Black Sea Expedition

Thursday May 18, 2006

Another exciting day, out on the Endeavor: After searching around, we came across a KA-25, which is a Russian anti-submarine helicopter. What’s really cool about it (at least to me, since I don’t know a lot about anti-submarine helicopter, it may be common place) is the fact it has a sonar contraption that could be lowered into the water to give the pilot a better view of what was below.

On board we have two Ukrainian scientists, Slavic Gerasimov and Dr. Voronov, and ANYTIME we find something they come running to look at the screens. Well, the KA-25 is a fairly recent piece of machinery (1960s to 1970s). Dr. Voronov called the Russian consolute, who got on the phone with the Moscow and did some research into missing/destroyed KA-25. In the end, Dr. Voronov talked with the wife of the pilot. It seems in 1979 this specific KA-25 was on a training mission and has been missing ever since. It went down with 7 Russian soldiers and missing ever since. Dr. Ballard has decided to not release the video to ANYONE, other than the Russian government, so that the proper identification can be made, which will include a memorial and proper service for the soldiers lost at sea. Very sad.

Life on board ship is interesting as always. This is my second expedition, as some may know. But, not my second time on a ship. So, seasickness: Not a problem. A little queasy the first day, just getting my “sea-legs”, and have been fine ever since. This is a much smaller boat then the Ronald H Brown, that we had last year. One can definitely feel EVERY wave. But, so far, no issue.

As described before, my watch (at the moment) is 4-8. The berths we have (first picture) are, how shall I put this? Economical. Yeah, that’s a good way to say they’re small. How does that saying go? Can’t swing a dead cat. You have to open the door to put your shirt on, because you have no room to stretch out your arm. Alright, I made the last one up, but it’s true. On the Brown we had two berths that shared a bathroom, without leaving the room. That was nice. Our bathroom is across the hall and shared with more than two berths.

The second picture is of the dining area. A rule we have is: “Meal-time is not social time”. In other words, the galley is for eating, when you’re done: leave. This is a small ship, as soon as you’ve finished your meal, you better get up because some else is waiting to sit and eat. A change from working on Lost City last year, we obviously steamed out from Woods Hole and sat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for three weeks. This time we’re hitting port at least every ten days. This means we get to have fresh food brought on board regularly, which is nice. We’ve been eating seared tuna steaks, roast duck, SOS, Liverwurst sandwiches, turkey dinners, shrimp scampi, to name just a few. The range in different foods is interesting. But the cook is really good, he actually caters to the needs of most of the crew, as there are so few of us. On the Brown, it was buffet style.

posted by DaveandBrian @ 10:25 PM