Time: 12:10 Pacific Coast Time

Not much going on. Although we have altered our course quite a bit in the past day or so and are at least 100 miles west of the storm, we are in some choppy water. Just in the past hour it’s gotten a lot more rocky. I fell into a chair a few minutes ago. The funny thing is that since our bodies are so used to being rocked now, when we’re sitting we can’t really tell that it’s gotten worse. You really only feel it when you’re walking. So here I am falling into a chair and the SSSG tech is looking at me kind of strangely since she’s sitting at the computer.

I’ve been asked to start including our latitude and longitude and the time in the journal entries so you can plot our course. It’s a neat idea. In the computer lab, we have a bunch of monitors. One is all the info. like lat, long, salinity, depth, sea surface temp., etc. One has the course plotted on a chart and the course of Kenna. She’s been traveling right up our previous course, which is still plotted on the monitor, so it’s a good thing we changed headings!! Then two of the other monitors are live-camera images from the outside of the ship. The folks up on the bridge can change the picture. Right now, one is looking on the starboard side deck and one is looking directly off of the stern. Even on those monitors which don’t have a wide view, you can tell that the ocean is full of white caps. It’s pretty cloudy and grey too. Good thing I spent some time reading outside yesterday.

So, last night we had our Alvin orientation. It was SO cool. They wouldn’t let us take any pictures because we had to pay close attention. They briefed us on the outside of the sub and then we entered the sphere and were briefed on the inside of the sub, procedures, what we were allowed to touch, and what we were not allowed to touch. There aren’t seats in Alvin. You just sit on the hard, cold, metal floor and lean against the wall. Since it’s a perfect sphere, it’s pretty comfortable to lean against. There is a porthole right next to each observer seat and a monitor. The monitor can show any of the four computers, or the view of the cameras that are outside of the sub. And it was cold in there, even last night.

The coolest thing last night though, aside from being in Alvin, was watching the moon rise. It was incredibly dark. So dark you couldn’t see anything. You couldn’t tell where the horizon was and where the ocean was. Once the moon started to rise, it was just this little tiny beam of light and then all of a sudden two minutes later, it was completely visible. I took some video that turned out pretty good. I’ll try to send it tomorrow.

That’s about it for now. Not much going on. Maybe I’ll finally watch a DVD or something.

Julie Robidart, Scientist, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

At 3:30, we met in the main lab to try on the EBAs (Emergency Breathing Apparatuses). All the scientists have to try them on in case there is a problem on a dive — the EBAs are used to maintain oxygen in an emergency on the Alvin. The masks look a lot like something you would see on an alien in a science fiction flick, with a big hose leading from your mouth to the air supply machine. I can’t use the regular sized one, because I have a small head. They told me to remember, if I dive, to check to see that the one supplied for me has black straps, so I’ll have to try to remember that….

The molecular group then met in the library to discuss our cruise objectives. We talked about how many worms we would like to bring home and how they should be maintained. The meeting was very long, but the new scientists got to learn a little about what we do with the samples and how they are collected and such.

More reading, then I watched "Swingers" until dinner, where our options were pork chops, lamb chops, or beef chops (something like that — I don’t eat much meat, so I’m not so sure). It was a good dinner though. At dinner, I ran into my friend Tony (one of the Alvin pilots), who was drinking out of my cup that I left on the ship last year! I was looking at it and thought it looked awfully familiar. Upon closer examination, I saw the word "DART," which was what was left of what I had written over a year ago ("ROBIDART")!

To end the evening, I went to check my e-mail, where I discovered my friend hasn’t yet e-mailed me about what happened on the new episode of the "Real World." I will now go play Pictionary, then watch Made, the movie, before I go to sleep.