We've not gone away...but the internet has: Alex explains

For all you land dwelling folks working at stationary desks, it is often the case that refreshing your Facebook page can provide a small escape from reality and spur you on to do another 10 minutes of hard work, before another Facebook refresh is due. For us out at sea however, one cannot rely on the internet being there to comfort you, and this blog post comes about after 4 whole days without internet.

Discovery’s internet connection is provided by a geostationary satellite at 38ºW in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Discovery’s Internet receiver is located in front of the main mast. Putting two and two together (this is the science part of this blog entry), one finds that after you have sailed sufficiently west, and keep a westward heading, the main mast blocks out all signals from the geostationary satellite. The last 4 days we have been steaming to the WB6 site, and so our westward course meant continuous internet black out. We had 15 minutes of relief when we stopped and turned into the swell to deploy our last Argo float. However, being the one who deployed it, by the time I reached the lab again internet had gone. Though some were lucky enough to send off a single email!

So with the topic of discussion on board being the lack of internet, what is there to do when you need a break from your swaying Matlab screen? Often you will find us refreshing internet pages anyway, despite knowing what the outcome will be. In actual fact, reading about how the DNS look up failed often provides about as much relief and stimulation as Facebook does sometimes. Some great alternatives to internet entertainment can be to take a pleasant walk out on deck in the hot sun, and watch some flying fish leap about. However the weather has been less than satisfactory these past 4 days, with bouts of heavy rain, choppy seas and much cloud. Some intense lightning storms have even made good shows in the evening.

One might ask, why is Discovery designed so poorly, such that internet is blocked by something so trivial as the ships main mast? Surely, in this modern day and age where you can check facebook 2000 miles from land, such engineering difficulties would be easily overcome. You have to remember that Discovery is 50 years old now, and back in her day, the internet didn’t exist. When it did become available, some tell stories of your email being delivered to you each morning on paper printouts, and any outboard email you wished to send had to be given to the purser on a disk so he could send the whole batch at once. Dark times indeed.

So why are we able to put this blog post up today then? Well we have reached the WB6 site and our altered heading means the mast isn’t getting in the way, and so it looks like we will have internet for a good portion of the day. However once we are done here the blackout will return, as we set sail for Freeport in the Bahamas for the crew change.

Alex