It's been so long

Oops! Haven't posted in weeks! Brace yourselves, good readers, for a long catchup post. Here's the deal. I was summoned to go work offshore on the Miss Ginger (do ship names go in italics, or quotes? Please respond if you happen to have a master's degree in English) again, and that went well, but it was a short job, so I was back the next week. We are currently out of work for the AUV's. I don't want to complain, but why did they hire me if they didn't have any contracts lined up?
Anyway, just a day and a half after returning from the Ginger, I got a call saying they need me on one of the shallow water surveying vessels to take some samples of the ocean floor on the route that I had just finished surveying the week before. So I shipped out on the Moana Wave for what was supposed to be a three or four day job, and turned out to be more than I bargained for... Coring involves lowering either a 24 foot steel syringe-looking machine or a big weighted box to the ocean floor and hoping the device captures a sample of the top few feet of mud in a relatively pristine condition. In this case, the purpose is to see what kind of pipeline to lay there based on how much weight the mud can hold up.
After eighteen hours of travel time, we were on site. Add a couple hours to test conditions, and we were ready to go. We were about halfway to the seafloor on our first cast when we realized that there wasn't enough cable on the winch to reach the bottom. Not even close. This mistake cost us three days of transit time (there, back, and there again,) one afternoon to replace the cable, and it cost the foreman his job. Scary. Anyone could have made that mistake. After that was all sorted out, we started working with no more hangups, but now we were short handed, and three of the eight man team were totally new at this type of work. What that boiled down to was eighteen hour shifts. I worked longer hours during those three days than I ever have in my life, and I've worked at about 20 different jobs since I was sixteen.
So I got back from that job the day before yesterday, and now there's no work for that boat either. Today I got a call saying I am going to work for another department surveying for NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the people who publish and update nautical charts in the US. The seafloor is more dynamic than the dry land because water is better at carrying stuff than air. After a hurricane, ports are unnavigable until they have been re-surveyed. So I will be staying in a cabin by the beach, and every day I will go out and survey in a little 15 foot boat, and every night I will get to come back to the comfy cabin with high speed internet, and real beds. This beats living on a boat, and we still have a cook that comes and makes us dinner every night. Also, this will be the first time in six years that I will be working with women. My boss says I'll be doing this until further notice, and probably all summer.
Ok, so long post, but now I'm caught up. I have noticed that most fellow bloggers don't write about work, but it's all I got for the last couple weeks, and it's a new job, so I gotta get it down, so you, my esteemed reader, will know what I mean when I write that I was at work in future posts. Coming soon: pictures from the Gulf. I'm out of time.