Sunday August 22, 2004 21:22:59
GMT, 2:22pm shiptime
In transit to Astoria, OR
47N 126W (quite close to land)
Hello again readers,
It has been a long time since my last
log, so for those of you who fear I
have fallen overboard, been trampled by
Alvin, or plucked from the deck by
a black-footed albatross, rest assured
that I am OK. It's just that a
combination of a lot of work and nothing
much novel to write about
has hampered my creativity.
But let me sum up the last week or so.
After my dive at Welker,
we had four dives at Pratt Seamount, and
three at Giacomini. Our very last
dive was cancelled due to heavy seas.
This was disappointing, as we had
planned to explore an unnamed seamount
with a big crater on the top, about
700m across. This feature just appeared
to us during sea-beaming, and
looked very much like a donut in the first
images we generated. However we
decided that "donut" wasn't
a sufficiently exciting title for the
new
feature, so we renamed it "Caldera
of Doom". One of the scientific
observers for the planned dive was to
be GP Schmahl, our sponge guru. So
we had the perfect title for an animated
movie: "Spongebob and the Caldera
of Doom".
Anyway, 17 out of 18 planned Alvin dives
is something of a record up here
in the Gulf, so we feel lucky we got as
many dives as we did, and on
Thursday afternoon we began the long transit
home. The captain had allowed
extra time for the transit because of
a looming storm system that was
expected to slow us to 10 knots. But we
ran ahead of it, and with an
average 12 knots we are due to hit Astoria
early, arriving at the buoy
that marks the entrance to the Columbia
River.
Adieu,
Naomi
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