Half way, 7-1

We are officially half way through our recoveries and on an 11 hour transit to the second group of 8 OBSes. Today we managed to get two more! We recovered another Scripps instrument very early in the morning, I believe after 1 am so I didn't stay awake for it. We again had some troubles with the Lamont instrument, but it came up, slowly but surely.

We found out what is going wrong with those guys. The burn cables are encased in these plastic cylinders, and those cylinders were cracked (from the high pressure that deep in the ocean) on the one Lamont instrument we did recover. So, this is probably the reason why we never recovered the first one, its anchors were unable to burn off. This is also the reason why only one of the anchors burned off the OBS we did recover, the one that didn't burn off had this cracked cable housing cylinder. And again today, the Lamont OBS only was able to burn off one anchor weight. So it took 5 hours for it to get to the surface. I'm trying not to complain, because slow is better than not at all. It took 7 tries to get it to burn its single weight, and in that process I honestly started to believe it wasn't coming up at all. So, we are really holding our breath with those ones.

Otherwise, its super calm seas! It's been very nice the last few days, and its supposed to stay nice for the next 5-6 days which is perfect! By then we should be done, or almost done, with the recoveries and starting our 4 day transit to port in Guam!

Food is still excellent. Lunch was BLTs, sausages with peppers, and clam chowder. I opted to make myself a turkey sandwich for something a little lighter. Dinner was also delicious. Pork loin and crusted snapper, both were very good. With dirty rice and steamed zucchini, yum! Cookie of the day was oatmeal raisin, and there was leftover macadamia nut cheesecake from last night available for dessert. Tempting tempting.

Right now I am working the eight to midnight shift, and it will be extended an extra hour because we are switching time zones again. Too bad. So, Julia and I will be watching a couple movies again as we transit! The next pick up will occur a bit after 1 am this morning, and it's another Lamont OBS, so keep your fingers crossed for us!