Because today wasn't going to let me off, anyway. SG142 didn't call home last night, so from the moment I got in until I packed everything up to go home I've been poring over the last logs and running through all sorts of scenarios to help the search team. They're going out on the R/V Saemundsson, so they probably won't be functional (read: they'll be hurly) for the first 24 hours, and they won't have an ADCP to tell them what the currents are doing or web access to see the latest plots of the glider locations and status -- and the ship's email arrives and sends only 4 times a day.

The big news of the day is that iRobot snapped up the recently-completed license for Seaglider. You can read the press release on the Boston Globe.

In case you haven't heard, there was an earthquake in Iceland recently. I was on a bus at the time, heading from Reykjavik to the Blue Lagoon (closer to the international airport), and completely didn't notice.

Somehow, even right in the thick of things, I managed to miss all the excitement.

I'm in Iceland on vacation, technically, until May 31st. My original plans were to go home then and take over glider piloting again, but the recent near-demise of Float 48 and Seaglider 143 have changed that -- now I'll likely be staying for a few more days and heading out to 61N again on the Bjarni for a quick recovery cruise.

It's 12:55 on thursday, 22 May, and we're in sight of Reykjavik now. You can just make out the cathedral (the dark gray spike) near the guesthouse many of us stayed in prior to the cruise.

There's a latte waiting for me, in just another hour. :-)

14:20 on 21 May 2008: we're just now doing the final CTD cast of the cruise, wrapping up the last station of the last bowtie survey pattern. The weather is lovely: sun's out and the seas are calm. As soon as this is done, we head back towards Reykjavik. I suggested this final survey pattern (in green): yes, it's a joke. I don't understand why so many people are falling for it -- we barely have time for the straight run back to Reykjavik!

We picked up that last of the 5 PELAGRA sediment trap floats at 03:30, and now Dave Checkley and Ryan are getting ready to deploy the "bongo" zooplankton net tow in the quickly-fading semi-darkness. (Zooplankton come up when it's dark, which only happens for a few hours here.)

This is my second-to-last watch. One more to go, and then we'll be back in port! It's hard to believe the field cruise is nearly over.

We could see the rains coming yesterday afternoon. Now we've got 26-knot winds, and the sky has been overcast for most of the day. When Eric R. called up to the bridge to get permission to put the optics package overboard, he asked the Chief Mate to keep the sun on the starboard side -- which was taking enormous precautions, since the sun wasn't even out -- so Dee (C.Mate) said she'd do a sun dance. The sun didn't come out for the optics cast, but it did just come out now, and she called down to the Main Lab to point out that it worked. We had no doubt that it would...

The Bridge calls down to the main lab whenever there's a whale spotting, and whoever can typically dashes out onto deck with cameras and binoculars for a chance to see... well, anything that isn't their sampling apparatus, really, and whales are perfect for that. I took these pictures while a pod of pilot whales (probably) was checking out the boat and a distance of 300 - 500m, and off on the horizon some very large whale or group of whales was spouting off some huge plumes of water, easily visible against the blue sky.

The whale spotters are (left to right) Maren, Emily, and Alba.

Ah, nothing like being on the North Atlantic, right? Cold, dreary, gray seas and storm after storm... we had our two little storms, and for the past week and a half the weather has been absolutely lovely. I'm CTD chief during the middle watch, midnight to 4, so it's not too hard for me to see both sunset and sunrise every day.

Ivona asked for more pics, so here they are! I'll try to find some with people in them later.