My Dearest Anais,

Moonrise before the weather change.

It was very nice to get another letter from you and learn what you did at school, especially that you played some baseball. Ahh...its the greatest game there is. You also asked me about how gold exists in seawater. I do not know the answer and I am not sure that anyone else knows either because, as I said, there's not much gold in sea water. But I can tell you that gold is attached to some other elements to make a molecule, and that molecule floats around among the water molecules. So there aren't actually particles of gold in sea water.

Talking about water, about five minutes after I sent my last letter about water the cable holding the water sampler, which was at the time five or six feet above the ships deck, broke, so naturally the sampler broke. No one was hurt. The water sampler only weighed about 2000 pounds (about as much as a very small car) but the cable was supposed to hold 20,000 pounds or so. The moral of the story is don't stand under water samplers suspended by cables.

Black Smoker

We did get some water samples during the ALVIN dive the next day, and we were also able to measure the temperature as it was coming out of one of the vents. The temperature was 303 degrees Celsius (or 577 degrees Fahrenheit). Now it is interesting to reflect on how hot 303 degrees is. First of all, if Grandma were to cook, say, Thanksgiving turkey at 303 degrees C she would end up with a shriveled little black thing about the size of a small chicken that no amount of gravy, cranberries or anything else would help. Also, realize that when you boil water on the stove, it only reaches a temperature of 100 degrees. So how can there be water at 303 degrees if it boils to form steam at 100 degrees? Pressure is the reason. There is so much pressure that steam doesn't form because it takes up too much space. So the higher the pressure, the hotter water has to be to boil.

ALVIN

To everyones relief, we finally launched Jason yesterday and are now doing the mapping we set out to do. Jason is basically an underwater robot. It can be moved in various directions, and in front it has a hook on one side and a mechanical arm with a claw on the other side. Jason is attached to another vehicle that floats just above it, and that other vehicle is attached to the ship by a cable. Controlling it is not so simple. For that we need a pilot, who drives Jason around, an engineer, who controls the winch that controls the cable that Jason is attached to, and a navigator, who moves the ship around and shows the pilot which way to go.

control van

Mounted on Jason are eight (!!) different video and still cameras and a gizmo called a pencil sonar (this sends out a very narrow beam of sound to allow us to determine the distance to a small spot on whatever object we are looking at).

All of the images from the cameras and data from the sonar come up the cable to the ship. To figure out where to go and what to do with Jason and to keep track of all the information requires an additional five of us. The worst job belongs to the poor guy who has to keep track of the video recorders.

Jason

Can you imagine --nine tape decks running at once and someone having to change and label all the tapes. A couple hours of that and you are cross-eyed. Anyway, all eight of us are crammed into a container, which is about the size of a garage for one car, which would not be so bad except that we share that space with an enormous amount of electronic equipment. We work 24 hours a day, without stop, and to do this we divide ourselves up in three groups. Each group works 4 hours and then has the next 8 hours off. My shift is 12 to 4, so I work from midnight to 4 AM and then noon to 4 PM.

So, thats what our lives are going to be like for the next four or five days, or until the next storm arrives. I hope you have a fun weekend, and it will not be long before I am home with you and Mama.

Great big kisses,
Papa