We’ve finished site U1462, there’s no core coming up, and we haven’t seen land or had a day off for six weeks. The six week point is famous for being a bit of a slump in every expedition, as all that time at sea starts to catch up with everyone. So to keep everyone’s spirits up and stave off cabin fever, our staff-scientist Kara arranged some silliness with “Feats of Strength” on the helideck. It was all terribly unscientific.

Our teams were The Fighting Mongooses, Hannanigans, Team Nautilus and TBA. Four teams, four games, fabulous prizes for the winners.

Game 1: Doctor Cup-Hands

The first member of each team puts cups on their hands, and puts on a labcoat as fast as they can. When the labcoat’s on, they pass the cups to the next person, drop the coat, and repeat until the whole team has finished! Finding the sleeves is quite a challenge when you have hooves instead of fingers. Must be why horses don’t wear coats.

Game 2: Cookie-Face

Put a cookie on your forehead. Put your hands behind your back. Get the cookie to your mouth. First cookie wins! This is a bit like that thing people do to show how well trained their labrador is. A great way to get crumbs in your eyebrows.

Game 3: Egg-and-spoon relay

Pretty standard. Run around the outside of the helideck to your teammate with an egg on a spoon, deliver it to their spoon, repeat. If you don’t have a helideck any sort of aircraft platform or runway will probably do.

Game 4: Cottonball Run

Everyone smears vaseline on their noses. One team member at a time runs to the other end of the helideck, sticks their face in a bowl of cottonbuds, and tries to bring back as many to their team as possible, using only the adhesive power of their faces. Sometimes you can get lucky and get a whole clump at once! Beards might help. 

Congratulations to Team Hannanigans! They win the greatest prize of all: Chocolate!

If you’re on a scientific drilling ship, and suffering from a case of the week sixes, try some of these games! Or make up your own. A good formula seems to be getting people do do a simple task without the use of hands.