My first oceanographic cruise in September 1963 did not go well – at all. I had learned that Pierre Welander, a Swedish oceanographer at the University of Gothenburg was planning to test a new technique he and his engineer (I forget his name so I’ll call him Lars) had developed to measure currents. If my memory serves me right, it consisted of a kilometer long flexible tube they were going to lay on the bottom. As the current varied, so would the pressure difference between the open ends vary. This would induce a weak flow in the tube, a flow which they hoped to measure by looking at how heat dispersed from a point source in the tube – did it go in one direction or the other, something like this is what I recall. Sounded pretty crazy, perhaps I misunderstood something.
The cruise was planned as a day trip on the little WHOI vessel Gosnold out of Provincetown at the northern tip of Cape Cod. I got permission from my advisor at MIT to take part. My Swedish wife knew Pierre and insisted on coming along. When we checked into a motel in P-town the evening before we were told that the cruise likely wouldn’t take place because of bad weather. So Pierre and Lars went out to spend the evening with the crew - having a good (and wet) time. My wife and I showed up at the boat the next morning, but it was very quiet, no one was around. Later in the morning Pierre showed up and insisted we take our chances and head out anyway. The skipper obliged and we cast off at noontime. The P-town harbor is nicely protected, but once we came out into the open, it quickly became rather lumpy. I tried to brave it but finally had to give up and went below to ‘relieve’ myself. After a while I began to feel better and ventured back up. But by then the midship door had been sealed and the only way up was through a hatch at the back of the ship in the galley. When I got there I found my wife all alone eating lunch. No one else was around. She must have just sat down for I saw she was eating a Virginia ham steak with mashed potatoes and a pile of peas. I remember it well, for at the sight of that plate I immediately became nauseous, made a U-turn and rushed back to the comfort of my bunk, which I never left for the rest of the 12-hour cruise. My wife, bless her, wasn’t in the least perturbed by the ship’s heaving, pitching, and rolling so she spent her time up on the bridge frolicking with the skipper, Pierre and Lars. Every once in a while she would come down to my cabin and ask in Swedish “How are you feeling, dear?”