Embarkation and setting sail.
The day after arriving in Crete, I awoke to the same foreign landscape with one exception, a small white ship... the R/V Endeavor. The R/V Endeavor is a research vessel that is owned by UNOLS and operated by the University of Rhode Island. Weeks earlier my coworkers and I loaded all of our gear aboard and wished her well as she left the URI dock and made her way East across the Atlantic. So now, thousands of miles away, in Iraklion, she is the only familiar thing I see.
I rendezvoused with the troops in the hotel lobby. I needed to get to the ship as soon as possible (this trip is supposed to be work remember) but they all wanted to see some of the sight before boarding. So I told them to go play and I would take their luggage down to the ship. I checked out of the hotel, hailed a cab (foreign cabbies, woohoo!!) and drove down to the port. Now in the United States, driving out to a ship would require some kind of security check but not here. The cab driver drove straight up to the ship. Apparently us American's really are a paranoid bunch.
At the ship several familiar faces greeted me. It's funny I knew exactly who I was going to run into here and they too knew that I was arriving but yet something about being half way around the world made it feel like an unexpected surprise to everyone.
I loaded my gear, found my cabin, unpacked and then went straight to work. Not long after I had started the distractions began. A second ship involved in this expedition, the Aegaeo, just so happened to at the next pier so a group of us threw down our tools and made our way over. Katy was doing work on the Aegaeo. Katy is a graduate student at URI and just like Jimmy and Chris, she also works the same building as I do. She�s only got a few more days to go before she treats herself to a three-week mini-vacation in Santorini. Then she'll join us on the Endeavor for another week of exploration.
A few hours later the rest of the guys showed up from their sightseeing trip. After they boarded and some last minute logistics were taken care of, the ship's crew raised the gangway and we were off. Thirty minutes after leaving Iraklion all the new people watched the standard (read... dated) safety videos and tried out their immersion (gumby) suits. With those formalities taken care of, I settled in for the two-day transit North, through the Aegean Sea towards Istanbul, Turkey.
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