West Coast Expedition
July 20 - August 30, 2002
West Coast of North America
Logbook
August 1, 2002
Log Entry: FROM THE BOUNDING MAIN - Our final update for this leg of the expedition. Last night the wind showed no sign of letting up, blowing 40 knots minimum. The seas were about 10 feet and confused. Because of the conditions, it was highly unlikely we would be able to dive today and the transit was expected to be slower-going than the 15 hours planned to put us in port tomorrow morning. So we opted instead to deploy the rock-crusher all night and begin our transit this morning. Jim and Z nobly stayed up to assist the crew to launch and recover the gear. We succeeded in collecting volcanic glass fragments with every deployment and now have glass samples from along the northern ridge axis nearly to the Blanco Transform.
We departed the northern Gorda early this morning for a slow slog in the trough to Newport, Oregon. As we go northeast, the wind is abating and the trip is more comfortable. We're well into the high pressure system we'd been on the edge of for the last week. We're nearly packed and have cleaned up the lab. Tomorrow we will ship out pallets of samples and gear and head for home, leaving the Western Flyer for the next science party.
--Jenny