Exhausted Vernon and Maltese Corsairs

As a penalty of its little misbehavior yesterday, we decided to make Vernon work really hard today. The plan was to do two trips to the survey area, one early in the morning and one in the afternoon and with a charging session in between.

Morning team heading for the boat

The morning team left at 6:30 am. Amy and Jane made two missions to expand our surveyed area further from shore. It was a calm day at sea, and the first mission went so smoothly that the team found some time to code, read, write and draw on the boat.

Fascinating view of Valleta from the boat

Karly's masterpiece

At the end of the first mission, Vernon had already done five passes over the survey area, which is about 3km long, and its battery had dropped to 21% (running sonar takes a lot of power), but we decided to push its limit and do a sixth pass. This time, we included a safety return path in the mission, so that Vernon would drive to the parking location in case the battery dropped too low. However, we waited at the parking location and Vernon did not show up at the appointed time. We had to backtrack again. Fortunately, it only took several minutes before Amy found Vernon, exhausting all its power and floating helplessly on the sea.

We agreed that we should not do more than five passes over the area in future expeditions. The afternoon mission was canceled because Vernon was so exhausted that it could not be fully charged in time.

In the afternoon, we had an amazing presentation on Maltese history by our guest speaker Liam Gauci. We learned about how the Knights of St Johns fended off the great siege by the Ottomans in 1565 and built the city of Valletta, named after Grand Master La Vallette, the hero of the siege; how corsairs, "legal" pirates supported by the Spanish court, flourished the economy of Malta by raiding Ottoman merchant ships and selling their cargo to Europe; and how Maltese culture is influenced by cultures from all over the Mediterranean world such as French, Italian and Arabic. For instance, the world for God in Maltese is "Alla", which is similar to the Arabic God Allah. The team also got really interested in Maltese cuisine after the presentation. Stewed rabbit has made its way into Roslyn's bucket list.