Come Sail Away with Me

Hi friends,

I'm happy to write that we've finally left port and our on our way to the first scientific drilling sites! We departed from Singapore at about 7am local time yesterday and have been in transit to a spot off the northwest coast of Australia for the past 30 hours or so. It will take us another 4+ days to arrive at the site, so we've been having a few meetings and working in our labs to prepare all of the instruments, procedures, etc. so that we're ready to go once we start drilling. It has been really strange not to be able to see any land (and often, no other ships) for the past day or so.

So far, we've been blessed with really calm weather and seas. The gentle rocking of the boat has actually been more sleep-inducing than uncomfortable, but we'll see what happens once reach the Timor Sea and are out in more open waters. We also crossed the equator about 16 hours ago, so I'm officially in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. I'll be staring at flushing toilets and running faucets more often than usual for the next couple days to observe the direction in which the water swirls.


Tomorrow marks our first official day of shifts. I'll be working noon to midnight local time, 7 days a week until the end of the expedition. The bad news is that the baseball playoffs might be on in middle of the "night" for me. The good news is that the Cubs won! Here's to hoping there's even better news to come.

- Dan