This is the first in my brief series of blogs about my trip to New England and sailing on the NOAA research vessel Gloria Michelle. The journalistic nature of these entries is due to the fact that I am literally just copying the journal entries as I wrote them in my notebook. Here it is:
"Today I arrived in Wood Hole for my cruise. Driving from the airport in Providence, I thought that Cape Cod was quite busy for my tastes. Woods Hole is a very small town, whose main economy seems to be marine research. There are three institutions in Woods Hole: the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, more commonly referred to by employees there as "NMFS" or just "NOAA." I spent most of the day just hanging out in Woods Hole because the ship was out doing some test trawls. NMFS sits directly on the harbor in Woods Hole, and is where the Gloria Michelle and other NOAA ships (like the Delaware) are berthed when they are in port. Across the harbor from NMFS you can see Martha's Vineyard. Huge ferries regularly leave from Woods Hole to take tourists to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. My inititial thought about the staff at NMFS its that they are very friendly, from helping with my fingerprinting to showing me around Woods Hole. When I first saw the Gloria Michelle, I was somewhat intimidated by the size and very mechanical looking features. As it turns out, the Gloria Michelle is just an old commercial fishing boat that was acquired by NOAA due to the fact that it was seized transporting tons of drugs! The boat is small, but not as small as I imagined. There is one bathroom, an outside shower which seems dangerously close to the edge of the ship, and the galley consists of a tiny cooking area with one small booth table that fits maybe 6 (there will be 9 of us onboard). That table seems to be the only indoor place where you can go to relax. The "state" rooms are smallish with two bunked racks on either side of a small isle. It will be a challenge to have 4 women in here getting ready during the first leg of the cruise (the second and third leg will be only myself and one other female so we will move to a two person state room). The scientific processing station is fancy and makes entering data very easy. It uses a magnetic board to measure lengths of fish, which are automatically uploaded into a database and labels are automatically printed for preserving specimen stomachs. After hanging out in Woods Hole tonight ( I got an awesome shrimp and scallop pizza and cool t-shirt and yummy local beer), I realize how much this experience helps me to relate to what Dan went through in his sailing years - from sleeping in tiny coffin-like racks, to climbing steep ladders, to being excited to be in a port off the boat at night. I am also getting a taste for Woods Hole, Cape Cod and New England in general. Being here, feels like the epitome of the east coast. Houses in Cape Cod look exactly as you would suspect - grayish cedar shingles on most all the quant houses with perfectly manicured lawns. I don't really know what to make of the people yet, I guess I am just totally unfamiliar with the New England money culture sort of people that vacation here. I put on my motion sickness patch for the first time tonight, and it made me feel a bit off, like maybe it messed with my equilibrium or something, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. Tomorrow leave around 10am and are steaming all day to Maine to be in position to begin fishing on Thursday.
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