The expedition starts

The science team arrived on Saturday and Sunday and along with the officers, crew, and technicians made the final preparations for our expedition before the ship sailed this morning (Tuesday).  
Whilst in Tenerife we were lucky to see the Carnival of Santa Cruz - considered to be the world's second most popular carnival after the Rio Carnival. Unfortunately we will miss the finale of the this 5-day festival tonight and the 'Burning of the Sardine' on Ash Wednesday.   Instead this evening we will be completing our first CTDs and tomorrow we will be serving the first mooring of the RAPID array.
Our ship, the RRS James Cook, is one of two operated by the National Oceanography Centre and coincidently her sister ship the RRS Discovery was in port in Santa Cruz at the same time.
It was just a short 3 hour sail to our first CTD station where we are calibrating and testing instruments soon to be deployed on the RAPID array.

This weekend there was a carnival in Tenerife to celebrate 

The RRS James Cook in the harbour of Santa Cruz
with her sister ship the RRS  Discovery just along the quay.

Tenerife is left behind as the ship departs Santa Cruz

Less than two weeks to go

Last week the dockside at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) was busy with preparations for the next expedition of the RRS James Cook.   As well as a ship's usual supplies tonnes of scientific instruments and miles of wire were stowed away ready to be deployed on the 'RAPID array' in the subtropical Atlantic.    On Tuesday the officers and crew set sail to Tenerife where the expedition will start at the end of February.   There 7 scientist and 8 technicians will join the ship to spend the next 6 weeks at sea gathering data from an array of over 200 instruments that span the Atlantic from Africa on the east to the Bahamas on the west.
We will be posting regular articles on this blog and hope that you will follow our progress.

The RRS James Cook docked at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton