Hawaii Cruise Logbook

March 23, 2001: Leg 1; Day 11

Expeditions 2001
March
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25 26 27 28 29 30  31
April
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June
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No update available. It's just a little too bumpy out here right now. 50 knot winds and the waves are going over the bridge.

-George Matsumoto

0800 WFT; 1000 PST

26°13.91'N, 148 °26.15'W

Winds at 33 knots
Water temperature - 21.66C

Wow, what a storm! The winds got up to 50 knots last night and the spray from the waves were coming up over the bridge. We all clustered around 1000 hours PST to look for the MIR, if it came down in the Pacific it wasn't near us. The winds have died down slightly but the swells are still pretty good-sized.

0ar23_323map.jpg (30564 bytes)Our current location is at the tip of the pencil. Note the sextant above, this is used at night to calculate our position, using the stars as reference points.    

 
mar23_ctdlaunch.jpg (59034 bytes)

Here is the CTD launch from yesterday, those braving the elements are Paul Chua, Darrell Palmer, Dan Chamberlain, and Brian Ackerman.

 

 
The gale that we went through is heading for the West Coast and it's a big one! Prepare for some rain and high winds, that's what we got. At least you won't have the ups and downs and sideways motion that we had last night. The winds are still pretty high (30 knots). We have passed our scheduled dive station (D7) for the day and are going to look and see if we can do a CTD station later on this afternoon. If the weather continues to calm, we may try a ROV dive as well. The sky is blue and the sun is out and more folks are out and about today than yesterday.

mar23_gale.jpg (30375 bytes)Here is the low pressure front that we have experienced during the last 36 hours. The image is taken from the weather fax with the locations added in via Photoshop by Steven Haddock.

 

 

 

mar23_bowflex.jpg (46851 bytes)Steven Haddock working out on the bowflex machine. This is down in the port hull and you have to pass the ice cream freezer to get to it. A test of will power! 

 

 

 

mar23_wash.jpg (29363 bytes)The washer and dryer are on the aft deck make ship life much easier.

 

 

 

 

1330 hours WFT; 1530 hours PST

We will be stopping for a CTD station this afternoon. Francisco Chavez has generated a beautiful graphic showing the salinity levels recorded thus far as we have moved from east to west across the Pacific Ocean.

mar23_wfsalinity.jpg (58633 bytes)

 

 

 

 
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