Jaya here, and although Emily and I have split ways for our respective vessels, I’m still in our base city of Göteborg. I’ve been assigned to the Icebeam, but as we wait for a project to be finalized, the vessel is docked right in front of the MMT office on the Göta River. I’ve moved fully on board, and my daily commute is now 1 minute from my cabin to the mess room.
The Icebeam is a narrow, tall vessel. At the very top is the bridge where the captain and officers work. The second floor is where most of the cabins are (including mine). The third floor is mess and kitchen, online and offline data processing spaces, a few more cabins and the aft deck. At the very bottom are the engine rooms and cargo hold.
My cabin is a small room with bunkbeds and a table and its own ensuite bathroom! Now that’s living. The number of crew on board is pretty low right now as we wait for our next assignment, so I have the room all to myself. The other place onboard where I spend most of my time is the mess room, where the crew and surveyors eat all of our meals. 
All of our meals are prepared by Hanna, our cook. Living aboard the Icebeam has been my introduction to Swedish cuisine, as Hanna prepares a lot of the more traditional home cooked Swedish foods. She even makes cakes for birthdays!
While we have been waiting to transit to our project, we’ve been doing testing of the various instruments. (I use the royal we, as I haven’t really been helpful in the testing.) What is really cool about MMT is that they have their own in house research and development workshop. As surveyors, MMT is always looking for technologies that will increase the efficiency and accuracy of its data collection, and although sometimes hardware companies will develop better products, sometimes its up to MMT to develop technologies that are up to its own specifications and needs. For the past couple of days, we have been testing out a new gravimeter array locally, along with some of the other onboard systems.
Now as I am the newbie on board, I have NONEXISTENT sea legs. Did I mention the Icebeam is tall and narrow? Basically that means in any kind of wavy situation, the vessel is always rocking, and pitching, and rolling and I’m always the first to feel it. Because we come back to dock every evening in Göteborg, I haven’t gotten used to the motion. It usually takes about 2 or 3 days of continuous motion to get somewhat used to the motion. All this means is that I spend a lot of time sleeping once I start feeling nauseous. (TMI?)
But don’t worry, at least there hasn’t been a velociraptor incident recently.
As of now, the plan is to start a transit to Esbjerg, Denmark tomorrow (where Emily started aboard the Franklin) and from there head offshore to our survey sites. More to come on offshore work once I get the hang of things.