moving south of the Mendocino fault, going towards Noyo channel

we are now transiting to the Noyo channel core site. we have had
decent luck coring in the MDZ...

passing over the Viacaino block, pretty unstratigraphic (hahaha). we
plan on coring where cores were collected in 1999. we want a clean
core so that we can CT-scan it. the one we have has had samples
removed, so the CT-scan is not very good. we are on a 75 nautical mile
transit, followed by a 15 mile bathy/sub-bottom survey.

the biggest problem we have currently is that there is a part of the
cable (that we use to lower the corers to the sea floor) that has
broken strands in it. we do not really know exactly where in the cable
this problem is. so, when we get to the site, we will lower a kasten
core ( 8" square corer, about 10' long, designed to collect large
volume cores as the foraminiferid abundance is low here and we need
larger sediment volumes to get enough foram fossils to obtain a
radiocarbon age) to see if the wire is long enough to core at Noyo.
the site depth is ~3320 m. we know we can core to 3088m, but not how
mych deeper. we do not want to lose our coring equipment, nor injure
any person (if the cable breaks, people could get hurt, the tension at
3300 m from just the cable is 4,620 pounds at 1.4 lbs per meter in
water).

more later, back to work... love it! cruise is going great. all in
upbeat mood. danielle with back injury is back to standing up (she was
stuck in bed for a week). peace out, jay