Latitude: 14° N

Longitude: 111° W

Time: 1145 (Mountain time — we crossed time zones last night)

Well, Kenna has veered in toward the coast of Mexico, just as predicted. The ship has started to head back on course, so we are crossing in behind the storm now. Today is definitely the roughest day on the boat. For the first time, I’ve had trouble walking today. Been slammed into a few chairs and poles. I’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow, I suspect. Since it’s so rough, I’ll admit it’s a little hard to sit in front of this computer for any extended period of time. I did manage to sit in front of it this morning long enough to edit the moon-rise video I took the other night. That should be sent out to you folks a little later today. We got a couple of interviews for you as well. The science crew is starting to have a few things to do. Today they started building the basket on Alvin. The basket is this green grate-like thing that hangs off of the front of the sub. On top of it they place all of the equipment needed for the dive. It has to be placed in a certain order (the order in which it will be used on the dive), and it has to be packed efficiently as well.

For the first time today, I’m starting to really miss some folks back home. I’m not homesick, but after a week of not talking to some people, you do get a little sad every now and then. But, we have plenty to distract us here on the ship. Aside from being able to walk outside and see the ocean whenever we want and try to find cool animals like flying fish, we have foosball, ping-pong (the tournament draw has been posted in the main lab but no one wants to start playing cause it’s so rough), and lots of books and movies. Last night I played ping-pong with Blee Williams, one of the Alvin pilots. It was incredibly rough at the time, which only made it more fun. Ping-pong games always draw a crowd, but when it’s rough out there, it seems to be a bigger crowd because the two people playing are having such a hard time standing up let alone moving around and trying to hit the ball that is flying all over the place. You actually adjust after about 10 minutes and can be pretty good despite the unsteady ground you’re standing on. I’ll get back to land and be able to beat anyone who comes my way if I master the game at sea. Well, sorry today is so boring, but that’s life on a ship. Only a couple of more days until the dives begin and then there will be amazing things to write to you guys about and send you pictures and video of. Stay tuned…