When we first arrived at GBI (Great Barrier Island), the first thing we did after anchoring was a field day! Although we clean the ship daily, during field day we do a deep clean of everything, including stuff that would be rather difficult to clean while underway.
After 2.5 hours of cleaning, we got to go swimming! We even got to jump off the end of the bowsprit, which was a really cool experience. It was a lot higher than I thought though…and I didn’t realize this until I had already jumped
Afterwards, we had a talk from Sarah Dwyer, an employee of the DOC (Department of Conservation) who lived on GBI. She talked about her research there and about the importance of minimizing pests to preserve areas like GBI. Mammals (except one type of bat) are not native to New Zealand, and their presence can be detrimental to the survival of native species. A current issue at GBI is a fungus that’s spreading around and killing off the native Kauri trees. Kauri trees can survive for 1,000 years or more, so it’s not easy to re-grow the populations of Kauri trees after they’ve been depleted by the fungus.
It was a pretty interesting talk, but while she was presenting there was this duck (which was apparently endangered) that came up on deck and walked around right next to me for most of it, which was really distracting. It also pooped on deck. As it wandered around, it almost fell into the hatch where my bunk was. Honestly, it wasn’t the brightest fella, makes me wonder if that’s why they’re endangered…
That evening, I had a brief poi performance on the housetop (life bucket list item: perform poi on a tall ship - check!). The space wasn’t quite big enough, and I had to watch my footing with the hatches and vents, but it was fun. I was happy to see that people seemed to enjoy it too. My shipmates in the class Sense of Place performed something like a live-action poetry reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner where they acted out all the different scenes described in the poem. I was impressed by their selection of props given that we had been on the boat for the last while.
The next day, I got up early for morning watch and spent the morning helping with the small boats to get us on shore. Once we were at GBI, most of my shipmates and I broke up into smaller groups and made our way up to the summit of Mount Hobson. It was a nice walk, and got fairly rainy once we got to the top.
There were also a lot of suspension bridges along the way which I thought was pretty neat.
As we hiked, one of my shipmates mentioned the importance of appreciation, and it hit me all at once how lucky we were to be here, walking along a trail on an island not too many people get the chance to visit. On top of that, it’s unlikely that we’d ever stand at that particular spot again, with the same group of people we were with at that moment. I thought about my day-to-day experience at Olin - normally, I’d be sitting at a desk writing code or in the lab working on robots, which is cool on it’s own but here I was hiking along with my shipmates in New Zealand and getting credit for it.
In the evening, we had part 1 of our deck practical after an awesome dinner of chicken pot pies. It was basically a paper exam, and we dispersed to different corners of the ship to work on it. Taking a test on the housetop while anchored at a scenic location like GBI - can I take all of my exams here?
On the last day of our port stop, I woke up early for my shift of the anchor and boat check. During the evening, there had been 35 knot gusts of wind, causing us to drag our anchor quite a ways from where we had originally anchored. After the rest of the ship’s company woke up, we ate breakfast and for went on shore (it was optional today, but what would I do on the boat? Plus, it’s not every day you get the chance to visit a place like GBI). There wasn’t too much time allotted on shore today so I didn’t see much, but I was still glad I went.
In the afternoon, we departed from GBI and headed towards Wellington. The upcoming 11 day passage was going to be our longest continuous time spent at sea, and I was extremely excited for all of the science and sailhandling we’d get to do.
Port stop dates: Feb 29th - March 2nd, 2020