Today we had our first sight of land since we left Manzanillo in our wake. This land was spotted with mountains that we could see in the distance. In fact, we were looking at the Baja Peninsula. Can you find that on the map? Quick, grab a map! Go on, I'll wait until you get back ... First, look for our starting point at 13° north, 103° west. Now, find San Diego, California -- that's our destination, where we'll dock. If you draw a straight line connecting the two, that's roughly our path back.

Since we left the 13° north site, you would think that we'd have lots of free time. Well, we certainly have more than what we had during the dive series, but there's still an awful lot to get done.

The Alvin Group has been very busy servicing the submersible. One of their primary tasks is to service the penetrators around the pilot's port. The penetrators are actually holes through the titanium sphere that allow wires from the external equipment to pass into the sphere. It is these wires that allow the pilot and observers to control equipment from within the submersible.

Servicing the penetrators is no small feat. First, everything is labeled and carefully documented. Then, one penetrator is removed, cleaned and serviced. Before the penetrator is replaced, it is coated with a dye and secured. Then it is removed and the dye markings left on the sphere surface are examined to make sure that the penetrator is making contact in the right places.

All in all, there are 27 or more pages of paperwork to be filled out for each penetrator and there are eight penetrators around each port. This paperwork consists of checklists that the technician must complete and sign at each step to be sure that the job is done correctly.

The Alvin Group isn't too busy to humor two hungry education coordinators' appetites for knowledge. Alvin Technician Greg Speer showed us a lot of neat features about how Alvin is serviced including some of the emergency systems. Did you know that if Alvin were to become pinned down, the pilot can fire the explosive bolts which hold the manipulators and the scientific basket to the submersible? These bolts have a wire that runs to them and if fired, the bolt will actually snap off, freeing Alvin from the pinned basket or manipulator.

Alvin's batteries are on the same system and they could be dropped if the pilot needed to lighten the submersible to make it float. As a worst-case scenario, Greg showed us how the titanium sphere could be released from the after-body. The sphere has a tremendous amount of buoyancy. Greg guessed that if it ever was released from 2,500 meters down, the sphere would actually 'jump' out of the water when it reached the surface. Fortunately, the Alvin Group has never employed this safety feature, although they always check to make sure that it is functioning properly before they deploy for a dive.

Greg also told us a few stories about the dedication that the Alvin Group has. Every night, after a dive, Alvin's batteries need to be recharged for the next day's dive. Occasionally, the rechargers shut down at night and one of Alvin technicians must restart the system. If the batteries don't get charged, there is no dive!

"One time on a previous cruise, the unexpected shut downs got so bad, that Alvin Technician Mark Spear actually slept next to the battery charger and set his watch to wake him up every 15 minutes," Greg told us.

I imagine it was a miserable night for Mark, but the dive went off the next day because of his efforts. The Alvin Group has amazed me with how hard they work to make the dives happen without a problem. They truly are an amazing group of people!

While the Alvin Group is busy, the scientists are busy packing. The group is a lot more laid back, now that they have successfully gathered their samples. These samples will keep the scientists occupied, for many months, perhaps even years to come. The amazing thing to me is that nothing was wasted. Every organism collected, every rock gathered, every drop of water brought back to the surface has been carefully analyzed and preserved for even further analysis. How do the scientists get these samples back to their labs for further analysis? Well, you'll have to check out Karen's journal for more details on how that all works.

As another day comes to a close on R/V Atlantis, I'm beginning to realize that Extreme 2004 is coming to an end. I'll be really sad when we leave the good ship and crew behind us and return to our families. However, before we do that, we still have a few days to enjoy the company of our new friends ...

Everybody's packing. Look back to our moving-in days way back at the end of November. If you think that looked complicated (and awkward and heavy and tricky) you should see this group now. There are samples to transport and equipment to gather, move, and prepare for travel or shipment. Plus, scientists are working in their labs wrapping up their research aboard Atlantis, as they're wrapping up the materials involved in the research.

So what's the trickiest thing for each scientist to transport? I asked around ...

For many, the most difficult thing to pack up and move is their samples. "Cultures have to be kept at 4º C," says Barbara Campbell. "Samples have to be kept on dry ice at -80ºC."

Barbara, who's returning to the University of Delaware, carries a big Coleman cooler and keeps things cold with dry ice. "You have to use less than five pounds to put it on a plane," she says.

Michelle Phillips, returning to the University of Oregon finds it cumbersome to carry a Styrofoam cooler full of samples.

Tom Niederberger has to carry his samples all the way back to New Zealand, a 12-hour flight. He'll carry a cooler, too, but because he's traveling internationally, he needs permits to carry microorganisms into the country.

"We don't call it a cooler," he corrects me. "In New Zealand it's a 'chilly bin.'"

Tom also has to bring fragile things, including glass tubes. "I don't know how I'm going to pack them yet," he says. Luckily there is some extra packing material around. Dr. Horst Felbeck's troublesome item is glass, too -- the glass homogenizers that are an important part of the processing of tubeworm samples. (Check my journal on December 9.) Fortunately Horst just has to get his equipment from the dock in San Diego to the lab at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, the town next door. He has pressure chambers to transport as well as all his samples.

Dr. Astrid Schnetzer only has to get as far as Los Angeles, a two-hour drive from San Diego. She'll keep her filters with DNA on them at -80º C with dry ice as she carries them to the lab.

Dr. Shannon Williamson and Shellie Bench have larger things to deal with. Shellie describes a 100-pound refrigerated centrifuge. "It's difficult to move around as you're packing it. The centrifuge travels in the bottom of a metal box."

Another heavy item is the "M-12," a peristaltic pump. Shannon says, "It's really heavy, and it's so critical it has its own box." All of their things will be strapped onto a pallet and shipped, including a $1,500 liquid nitrogen "dewar" with glass insulation inside, so it's fragile and expensive.

In addition, they, too, have samples to be kept on dry ice. "It's a complication," says Shellie, who must fly back to Delaware. "You're allowed to carry it on, but it becomes one of your checked bags, so you can carry less of your own stuff."

Many of the scientists with oodles of equipment will be doing as Shannon and Shellie will and strap their stuff onto pallets that can be loaded up by professional shippers and moved on out. But others will be responsible for science boxes full of small equipment -- and if some of the fragile things get padded by their extra socks and sweatshirts, that works out for everybody.

Kevin Portune will carry the Sipper home in pieces, packed in a box, along with his duffle bag and laptop computer. Mike and I are already discussing who will carry what from our pile of things: he's got the video camera and the CDs with copies of all our journals and photographs, and his laptop computer and his duffle; I've got the still camera, a laptop, and all my notebooks, my Sponge Bob backpack and my orange suitcase.

I feel as if I'm jumping the gun talking about all this stuff now. There's still plenty happening on the ship. Eric DeChaine, Alison Kelley, and I saw dolphins today, and Kevin and Ky Hacker saw whales.

Dr. Monika Bright gave a talk on the life cycle of Riftia pachyptila today -- and explained more about the babytraps. (See my journal for December 2. And watch for more tomorrow.) Ordinary Seaman Kevin Threadgold gave us boxing lessons tonight.

And Dr. Craig Cary tutored some of us in the fine art of swing dancing, out on the fantail this evening. We had the Stray Cats on the CD player, and a fierce easterly wind blowing us around. While dodging in and out of Alvin's tracks, some of us cut a rug - you should see Kevin do the pretzel! - and we found out that Ky can rock and swing at the same time.

After all this time, everything seems to be drawing to a close very quickly. I feel sad at leaving the ocean behind and heading back to the Connecticut woods. But then I think of something that happened yesterday when I was out on deck. Down at my feet I noticed something oddly familiar -- but oddly out of place, too. It was a leaf.

I dove for it, thinking, "How on earth --?" and then realized it was a part of the bloom of one of the poinsettia plants that crew bought in Manzanillo to decorate the ship for the holidays. It reminded me of something I noticed the first day in the Main Lab: silk autumn leaves were scattered over the table where Ky's video station sits. It seems that I'm not the only one who's torn between the ocean and the land.