Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 01:49:21 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jason Goodman <sci5@knorr.whoi.edu>
To: Everyone Who Cares <aharleytoo@aol.com>, cjsmith@MIT.EDU,
        cmitchel%admin1@carleton.edu, deepa@matrisome.mit.edu,
        dmm@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu, dressler@carleton.edu,
        gcollins@pggipl.geo.brown.edu, goodman@aloha.net, goodmanj@MIT.EDU,
        jcostell@carleton.edu, jhango@MIT.EDU, kkazkaz@carleton.edu,
        marc_moskowitz@hmco.com, marymary@MIT.EDU, mkalke@indiana.edu,
        nkritzer@westpub.com, rebecca_kavich@cayennesoft.com,
        rebecca_moskowitz@mathworks.com
Subject: bon voyage
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44 27'N, 62 60'W
Temp -.2 C, Winds 8 m/s
Seas: don't make me laugh.
	(Time to get used to the metric system, boys and girls.)

  We set sail today.  Most of the day was spent tying things down, moving 
things around, and other preliminaries.  For example, we're measuring the 
concentration of CFCs in the water: since CFCs have only been around for 
50 years, you can use them to see how "young" CFC-bearing water moves 
with respect to "old" water, which lacks CFCs because it hasn't come to 
the surface in 50 years.  Anyway, it's a very contamination-prone 
experiment because positively _everything_ has CFCs in it.  For example, 
the o-rings and o-ring grease in the water samplers.  (called "Niskin 
bottles", FYI.)  I spent a couple hours replacing the o-rings with 
CFC-free ones.  We also had a couple of training sessions, nothing new.
  I stayed out on deck and watched most of the time we were leaving 
Halifax.  Sailing under suspension bridges always disorients me: it's 
hard to tell if it's you or the bridge that's sliding along.  Halifax is 
also a pretty city seen from the water.  The last time I saw it, it was a 
lens-shaped orange glow toward the west, with pitch utter blackness 
surrounding it on every side, and an even blacker black ahead to the 
east.  Now there's nothing but night as far as can be seen in all 
directions.  You've never seen darkness until you've been out to sea on a 
cloudy night.  It's not like being locked in a closet.  In a closet, you 
can't see.  Here, you can see all the miles and miles of invisible night, 
stretching out to the nonexistent horizons.
  Rachel reminds me that I forgot to tell y'all what a CTD is.  It stands
for Conductivity-Temperature-Depth.  It's a cylindrical steel-tube frame
with its namesake sensors mounted near the bottom (along with numerous
optional others), and Niskin bottles mounted upright all around the
outside.  The Niskin bottles have snap-shut lids on the top and bottom --
they start open.  We put it over the side with a boom and a winch, and
lower it to the bottom, while it sends us those namesake measurements up
along the cable.  Then we haul it up again, sending a signal on the cable
to "trip" the bottles, snapping each shut on a water sample at a
particular depth.  We haul it aboard and do experiments on the samples. 
Ten points for anyone who can tell me why we don't trip the bottles on the
way down, and save time coming up.