On Tuesday August 5th we arrived at Newport OR from a two week cruise having recovered 33 and deployed 28 Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBSs) along the Blanco Transform Fault Zone and within the Gorda plate region in the Northeast Pacific. Life revolved around those exciting seconds as I was trying to hook the primary tagline on the instrument while it was bouncing around and drifting away with the swell. I did quite well considering the conditions, missing two times out of 15 attempts.
On Saturday August 9th we departed for the second, shorter leg for more OBS work, deploying and retrieving another 20 instruments. This time I had the midnight to noon watch helping the Scripps technicians on deck and monitoring the science instruments, data logging and network. After breakfast I would work on my small project soldering and potting cables for a Conductivity Temperature Density (CTD) instrument but if I could not fall asleep I would read Linux for Dummies- it works extraordinarily well.