back on track from padang

greetings landlubbers,

argghhhh. a few days ago we arrived at padang to 1)try to fix one of our sheaves
and 2) pick up a sheave we had freighted over from scripps (where the atlantis,
the sister ship to revelle, was conveniently docked). while the machine shops in
padang could not repair the sheave we had, the one from atlantis got installed.
i am just getting over 3 days of GI distress. mama mia, papa pia, dia----. i
think i can hold my food down, ill let you know. i am suspicous of the dish
cleanliness, but who knows...

we were unable to take piston cores until last night (remember we broke much of
the necc. equipment). we had a successful attempt with about 5 meters of
recovery. yippee. since the equip broke down, we could only take gravity cores
with an average recovery of about 2 meters max. so we are quite pleased. of
course, the sheaves are already smoking and this makes us very nervous. one
would think that this equipment would be in better shape. but, scripps manages
their equipment like many other public institutions, fix it when it breaks
(unlike maintain it so it does not break).

i did get to catch up on my sleep as we went into padang and during my illness.
so i am feeling rather well rested, a short lived experience. i am feeling much
more confident making decisions on where to core, following some successfull
choices without goldfinger at my side. expensive time, so lots of pressure to do
the right thing, but i can do it. all of my humboldt trained field geology
skills are paying off, ONCE AGAIN! thanks ken and bud and longshore, etal.

peacefully yours, one love jay

transit to padang

salutations

we are on our way to padang to pickup some scientists and drop off others. we
will also hopefully get replacement sheaves so we can take piston cores. using
only gravity cores has been severely limiting. however, great mud stratigraphy.

i will sleep a regular night tonight (at least i hope, we are at marsec II
security -- prates arggh!).

good day/night, jay

red eye

red yes

red eye

ready

little sleep and ready to core. lately the 4 hr sleep regime (when i am lucky)
is bearing hard on my eyes. they hurt. i am wearing sunglasses at night for a
different reason than the song. i am planning my next core site, last one b4 we
transit to padang (west coast of sumatra). i am looking forward to a little
sleep. we will be there for 1-2 days while we make ship repairs. have not been
able to do piston coring (longer cores, more strata, better) since we broke all
the ships equipment. howver, we have been ghaving rather goo dluck with the
cores we have been taking (ever since our second channel i spoke about many days
ago (lost track of timestill). what day is it? GMT julian day 139, 22:30.
whatever that means to youu, that is the timeline i am on. it is hartd to keep
track of 3 times: GMT, lcoal, and CA PST... i do still have the ability to
determine whether the sun is shinging or the moon is setting (had the first
opportunity to take a 5 minute breather and relax as the moon set tonight).

awesome love, jay

piggyback basin

also a delayed message, i hope i have the posting email address correct now...

greetings

similar to the CSZ there are sections of this subduction zone where the upper
plate faults switch vergence (the direction updip: landward vergence = updip
towards land; seawrd vergence = updip towards sea: the megathrust -- main fault
-- of the subduction zone is seaward vergent). ou first coring location was a
chanel system in the north in a landward vergent section. we had reasonable
results (russel wynn, turbidite sedimentologist from england) with ~15+ mud
turbidites. the folds are low angle and lesser erosion provides lower volume
turbidites. our second channel system was in a seaward vergent section. the
folds in this section loook like boxwork sandstone cliffs, providing ample sandy
sediment for turbidites, but we had terrible luck recovering much more than a
few decimeters in our cores (remember that we broke several of the sheaves that
we use to operate the main crane/winch that deploys our best coring device : the
piston corer: the piston corer uses suction and a trigger core to give us the
best penetration and the longest cores up to 20-30 feet; we are left with using
the aft a frame and 10' cores). sometime in the last 36 hrs (can't remember days
right now, still doing 16-20 hr shifts), we went to a piggy-back basin up on the
slope of the upper plate, in about 1/2 water depth fo the abysal plain (~1900m).
we had great luck retrieving cores here, found several ashes, can't wait to xrf
them. but... we also found stratigraphy that is difficult to interpret (no good
contacts, very gradual, no blatant turbidites). next we went to a channle system
in the next landward vergent section. here we had great luck acquiring the
longest core since channel 1 (HBO, where we wrote our own version fo six feet
under).

we are now transiting to the last landward vergent channel system before we pass
the rupture boundary between the 2004 and 2005 eqs. (simileue island).

i have been spending much of my time doing site planning, ship planning (telling
the bridge where we want to go, how fast, requesting crew, etc.), and assisting
the coring crew on deck. i am very tired (not conplainging as i am having the
time of my life, love it). eating mucho-vitamino. i am not going hungry... yet.
we pass the equator soon, where i will be indoctrinated to sea going farers
(basically, there is a ceremony where neptune does stuff, and the newbies are
calle dwogs and do penance of sorts, just hope they dont pour gallons of porkfat
al over me.).

you can find webcams on the ship's web page. google "scripps revelle ship", or
something like that, to get to the web page. the co-PI, joe stoner, not from
humboldt, his finace has told joe that she has seen me quite frequently in the
computer lab (our planning area) and on the aft deck coring. she told joe i am
not getting enough sleep. she is porbably right. there is usually (during good
stellite conditions) a ten second cycle on the refresh rate.

love you all, jay

long days short nights, or the inverse, can't keep track

this message was also sent orig a few days ago...

i love being on a ship. the ocean is such a deep blue. we have been very
fortunate and the seas are not very rough. the ship rolls and pitches quite a
bit for others. there are 1/2 dozen indonesian scientists on board and i have
been letting one of them use my ginger caps. i have not needed them since my 1st
two days. yippee.

we are just ow pulling up another 2.5" dia gravity core, so we really hope we
find something. having destroyed some of the essential winch equipment after
only a cuple of days of coring, we can only do a few types of cores. we are
expecting to meet up with replacement gear in padang (west coat sumatra) in less
than a week. so... we are using what equip we can to get recon data adn then we
can come back on our return transit to sample at specific locations we determine
now.

adios (there are 1/2 dozen spanish on baord as well) jay (more later)

turbidites

greetings and salutations (i oring sent this to the wrong address, so, a little
late)

i have been assigned two 12 hour shifts a day, so we'll see how long that lasts
(actually, i just fit in sleep when i can, about 4-6 hrs a day). i am spending
much of my time doing site and cruise planning. we look for large channels that
have large catchments that can provide large volumes of sediment for turbidite
production.
in 4ish days, we have cored one channel system using four different coring
devices with varying levels of success. we have found at least 15 mud
turbidites. we have also broken most of the large sheaves (blocks/ pulleys) that
are used for coring. so, we are now coring from an a frame form the stern.
things are going poorly.

next day: after mapping much of yesterday to fill in where previous bathymetry
was lacking, we have been searching for our second channel system. after finding
this system, we sent down a core and i finished my 21 hr shift with a 5 hr nap
to find that that core recovered less than 1 cc of very clean sand. the core did
not penetrate due to the sand (this means we found the channel, but it was full
o fsand). so, i set up a new mapping track to find a more distal location for
the channel (hopefully more muddy and less sandy). while many of the science
crew (not the coring techs nor the ships resident technicians) have little to do
(no cores), a few of us have been quite overworked. i do not see an end to this
work schedule. several hrs ago, chris and i found a location in this second
channel system that bends south due to interference with a large normal fault.
we are patiently awaiting the arrival of the core form the depths below. the
pulllout force was apprently representative of a core having penetrated into
sediment. we will know in about 1/2 hr.

saw two birds yersterday and a large water spout today. we have had several
squals, usually during coring operations. i have operated the a frame. we hope
to get new equipment sent to us in padang. later, jay

at sea

greetings

left the dock yesterday at about 4:20 pm. i had fun in phuket town, went out at
night and tried the local whiskey. i dont like whiskey, but i cant drink the
local beer. i wish i had spent more time learning thai, but asking how to say
things (like thank you korn-koon-cup for men, korn-koonku for women) is
apppreciated by locals. everybody likes a good joke (esp. when i am self
depracating; e.g. i played santa claus and a cowboy shooting guns in the hotel
lobby one night; they want me back for xmas)

taking ginger caps, so i am not sea sick, just a little quesy all over my body n
(prob jet lag more than anythying). the ocean color is the most blue i have ever
seen it.

very hot when there is no cloud in the sky. i seat at least a gallon two days
ago.

i already did some major boo-boos (mr clumso here). left some data back at the
lab. i am baby sitting the sattelite tracker because it does not work. we are
dl'ing 7X100 MB files. takes 10MB for 1 hr... i have selected our first core
site and chris adjusted it only a little. we should be there early tomorrow am.
cant wait.

just discussed the device i invented with the coring science crew salty's. we'll
see if it does not work. (if it works, we'll never know if we needed it. i
designed a shock absorber to absorb 30,000 #.

no pics for now. gotta go. love to all, as i should survive as today we got our
first education re: safety first and excape rafts

-j