I've been going to sea for research for nearly 20 years, and stopped counting the number of cruises I've taken part in after I realized that I'd spent more than a year of my life at sea. The cruises I've been on average about a month each.
Food is a pretty important diversion from work, so it figures prominently in the schedule.
These cruises are stressful because I am responsible for the profiler. The scientists rely on me to make sure the instrument works, or to fix it if it doesn't. The profiler is a complicated device, and discovering what's wrong can be very difficult and time consuming. Prior to each cruise, I try to make sure all the systems work perfectly, but the profiler's old, and often something fails. One of the things I learned early was to bring all the spares and test equipment I could possibly imagine using, and then bring some more.