15 April 2023
Start of the cruise in Guayaquil (basemap from 
ggplot2)
Yesterday evening at 8.30 pm we finally left the port. Originally, it was planned that we leave in the morning, however, it was delayed again and again. From noon to afternoon, then to 6 pm and finally to 8 pm.
We are starting.
As the day before yesterday, it was quite warm, however at least we had some wind. In the morning there was also so warm rain.
Rain in the morning.
View while in the port.
A thunderstorm is coming. Luckily, it did pass directly over us. However, we just sailed quite a while close to a thunderstorm.
For leave, we had help from a tug. First, the ship went slowly backwards and to the side and then forwards. The tug did come along for a bit and then left for the port. We went out into the dark with the lights of the port and city behind us. Otherwise, there was hardly anything to see, just the lights of some buoys. As it was so dark I also, unfortunately, could not see much of the river delta area.
Leaving Guayaquill
Out into the dark (as you can see it was too dark for my camera with the ship moving
The tug
I‘ll write about settling in on board and setting up the lab in a few days. Now, directly after leaving the port, we have a quite tight schedule for measurement stations. Approximately 10 hours after leaving the first station was expected (6 am …). A few hours after that we will have the next station. And in between, I need to finish setting up my lab. Of course, I’ll report later on what we do at the stations and what I am measuring.
Lab while setting up. Of course, I’ll write about it in more detail later.
One of the CTDs with Niskin bottles. They are used at stations to take samples from different water depths. I will describe this in a later blog post
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PTB doctoral student 
Rieke Schäfer is blogging here directly from the RV "Sonne" on her way west from South America across the Pacific Ocean.