Boating adventures and the most incredible hardware store you'll ever visit in your life...

Hi Everyone! I'm typing this up while I'm waiting to depart on the R/V Jack Robertson, one of the APL's research vessels. We'll be doing a mission on Lake Washington, but there will be more to come on that in the next few days.

Last week was a short week, but an exciting one. My advisor, Dr. Craig McNeil, took me to Hardwick's on Tuesday. If you've never gone, and you're in the Seattle area, it would be worth a trip. I could not believe my eyes walking in there. They have literally anything and everything you need to fix or build anything you may ever want to fix or build in your life. (That might be a slight exaggeration...but only a slight one.) We walked around looking for parts that will be used in my calibration setup.

On Wednesday, we prepared the AUV for launch in Lake Washington. The big snag was trying to get the Iriduim on the vehicle to make a call via satellite. We had to put the vehicle out in front of the lab (bear in mind that there are a few shops and boat docks down in front of the lab building). It attracted quite a bit of attention to say the least. If you've never seen a REMUS 100, it looks like a missile. Almost everyone asked me if it was going to blow up as I was sitting outside watching it, and a few former engineers came by and struck up some great conversations. Patience was key on Wednesday, and the call finally went through.

Thursday and Friday were boat days. I had only been out on a boat a few times before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I had an absolute blast! Thursday was windy and wet out on the lake, and there were a few challenges. I've been told that what happens on the boat stays on the boat, but I will say that I learned how to grapple for something on the bottom of a lake. We ran one mission on Thursday, but because of the weather and the vehicle's periodic surfacing, we decided to run another two missions on Friday. The missions on Friday were both successful. Trina and Andrey worked out the bugs in the vehicle communications and the vehicle stayed underwater for the duration of the missions.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this week, and the NSF Site Visit down in Beaverton!