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| Daily Updates: June
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TODAY'S WEATHER
Partly Cloudy
74°F (23.3°C)
Latitude: 33° 49'N
Longitude: 62° 34'W
Wind Direction: SSW
Wind Speed: 17 Knots
Sea State: 2
Sea Temperature: 73°F (22.8°C)
Swell(s) Height: 5 Foot
Barometric Pressure: 1020.5 MB
Visibility: Unrestricted
BREAKFAST
Pancakes with maple syrup
Hash browns
Sausage patties
Breakfast sandwiches
Oatmeal
Blueberry muffins
Fruit
LUNCH
Green curry vegetable soup
Fishwich with cheese on fresh powder rolls
Chicken and noodle casserole
Cut corn
Steamed herbed rice
French fries
Spicy chicken sticks
Fruit
Salad bar
Dutch apple crisp
DINNER
Baked meatloaf and gravy
Mashed potatoes
Honey pepper salmon fillet
Spicy shiitake brown rice
Peas, carrots, turnips
Cauliflower with garlic, soy, sesame
Barley oatmeal wheat rolls
Ice cream
Salad bar
A Visit from Pan
June 5, 2003
By Joe Appel
If the cruise mascot is Medusa, then her Greek
mythical cousin Pan, the trickster, has been visiting us on a
regular basis. We've had weather delays, hydrowinch malfunctions,
and now a mechanical problem with our prize tool, Alvin.
After only an hour on the sea floor today, pilot BLee Williams called up and
reported a strange odor in the sub's atmosphere. Neither he nor any of the Alvin crew
on the ship was able to positively identify the source of that odor, and so Expedition
Leader Pat Hickey instructed BLee to abort the dive and bring the sub back to Atlantis.
Safety of the submersible and the divers is
paramount, without exception. Though it's disappointing to the
divers and the whole expedition, something like this definitely
warrants canceling a dive. The sub was back on board not long
after noon.
After several hours of intensive trouble-shooting by the Alvin crew, they
think they've found the culprit: a suspect component on a power supply board.
Tonight they doing a 2-hour "deck dive", powering up the Alvin in dive
configuration and making sure all systems are functional. Another dive is scheduled
for tomorrow.
Most of the time you hear about a scientific discovery, it's a success story.
All the missteps, bad judgments and plain bad luck gets left out. The truth is
more complicated than that. All discovery brings with it some blind spots. Expedition
7 is a success story already, but it's a realistic one, with real-world circumstances.
Note that we're calling it Expedition 7 again, not the Medusa Cruise. The scientific
crew came to the realization today that using Medusa as our mythic agent in the
field has angered Poseidon, the ruler of the seas.
And so this evening, we conducted a ritual aimed at getting into Poseidon's good
graces. Each member of the science party and Alvin crew had a lock of
hair shorn from his or her head. The hair and our until-now prized Medusa medallion
were wrapped in a cloth.
The entire crew walked out on deck as a sliver of a crescent moon lit the sea.
The sea that moments later had an offering of hair and a Medusa medallion flung
into it from a hastily built slingshot. Poseidon, hear our prayer
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