New boat

Yesterday, my school's new boat was in town.  It is the Sikuliaq, 261 feet long and a sort of glacier-ice blue.  It was built in Wisconsin, finished and launched last year, and has spent the past year working it's way through the Great Lakes, down the east coast, through the Panama Canal, and (via Hawaii), now to Alaska.  She's an 'ice capable' boat, and can sail in ice up to ~3 feet thick by cutting through it with the sharp, reinforced bow.  In the past year they've done lots of sea trials, testing the new equipment, winches, etc.  Next, she heads to her home port of Seward, AK, then on to some ice trials in the arctic.  Actually, it won't be the first time in ice - when leaving the Great Lakes, there was apparently a lot of ice on the lakes!

Here's a panoramic shot with my phone, so it's a bit warped looking.

There was a lot of fuss over the boat, with public tours and a big reception.  Several students and I were volunteers leading people through the boat to the different 'tour stations'.  This is me and fellow PhD student Courtney, before the tours started:

This is a room where scientists can monitor all of the different scientific equipment they have deployed, along with sea floor maps, route maps, etc.  It's a pretty sweet operations room. There's also a huge, wide open back deck that can be customized for lots of different sampling operations.  The ship is mainly to to be used for physical oceanographic research, not biological stuff like catching fish. 

These two were up in the bridge.  A hula girl and a polar bear.  Ha!