14 August, 2001

Find Out More

There are 20 scientists aboard the USCGC Healy and several (including yours truly) are trying to get information out daily concerning our mission, but generally luck is not on our side. We have a 5-hour window of opportunity to connect with a NASA satellite. The communication specialists on board will frantically take an antenna from one side of the ship to the other trying to get a connection during these 5 hours each day. Sometimes they get us a connection for 3 minutes, sometimes not at all, sometimes for an hour. It is very frustrating! If you have e-mailed me through the TEA website, I may not have received your e-mail. I have replied to every e-mail that I have received.

If you would like more information/ updates on our voyage, there are several other websites to check out. For our location and daily weather reports, check out:http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/healy To see short video clips of what we are doing (taken by a scientist with more luck than me) check out: http://www.arcticvolcanoes.com

Today we are having another piece of bad luck. The CDT (piece of equipment used to detect hydrothermal vents) that we were to use yesterday broke! We had it in the water to send down and found that it wasn't working. The Coast Guard Marine Science Technicians spent the night trying to fix it, but no luck.

The problem that arose yesterday with losing the wire has been temporarily solved. There is another type of wire on board not generally used to dredge-it has an electrical cable running through it, but we can use it if we need to. So onward we go!

Statistics:

Latitude: 83 20 N

Longitude: 4 59 W

Air temp : 31 F

Water temp : 30 f

Sean, a computer whiz, looks at the computer server as he tries to send and receive our e-mails. He is everyone's best friend when the system works! <>

Onward we go! The Healy can break some serious ice. <>