Mary Phillips, Teacher In The Field
Mon, 21 Jul 2003

And the Winner is...

For ping-pong fans, the championship doubles match last night ended with Alejandro and Matt victorious in two straight games: 21-15 and 21-13. The “rec room” will be devoted to the all important OBS retrieval today, but more competitive action lies ahead...

A Little Peace and Quiet

Reading in my berth before sleep last night, I became conscious that something was suddenly missing from the assortment of sounds I had gotten used to hearing down on the D deck. The pings of the bathymetric sonar and assorted swishes of the waves against the ship were still audible, but instead of the constant sequence of dull “booms” which indicated the airgun firing sequence, there was a noticeable quiet.

Up on the fantail or stern of the Ewing, all is also quiet at the moment, with the gun booms swung back to their enclosed positions on the starboard and port sides of the ship. The guns and their attached buoys came in first last night, followed by the booms. Then the long and tideous process of hydraulically reeling in the streamer began, ending at about 6AM this morning when the tail buoys were unfortunately hauled in sideways. Three were lost to the ocean in the process, but now the streamer, looking like a huge, multicolored garden hose on its reel, is tucked in tightly as we speed along at 11.5 knots in transit to our OBS retrieval sites, moving considerably faster than the average speed of about 4 knots which we had maintained during the shooting schedule.

Our watch today will consist of regular monitoring and recording of all the critical data associated with the retrieval of each OBS: time, latitude and longitude, course heading, speed, etc. I also hope to get the call to head out to the waist deck, don life jacket and hard hat, and assist with the process.