Busy Week

Things were pretty busy this week, with plenty of field work. On Monday we ran out to the instument platform in the Neuse River estuary to maintain some of the instruments. I hate the Neuse. It stinks. It's full of pig shit.

Pigs and tobacco are the two main agricultural products of eastern North Carolina, and while I'm not sure which is worse for your health, I do know which smells worse when you drive by. When hurricanes flooded the region in '99 there were pig carcasses floating in streams of pig shit running thoughout the towns.

On Tuesday Tony and I went out to the Lookout Shoals buoy, which is about 27 miles offshore. He's trying to get radio communications going for the current and wave data it's supposed to be sending back, but still isn't, and I was along as a second set of hands. It was a very calm day and the water was really beautiful -- crystal clear.

So we're out there in the middle of nowhere with no land in sight on only one or two boats as specks on the horizon and all of a sudden, with no warning at all out of the clear blue skies KA-BOOM!!!! It was a defeaning sound like a lightning strike very close, but there was no flash of light. I was on deck and Tony came running out of the cabin yelling WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? I looked up, since there was no place else to look, and saw the faint vapor trail of a jet at very high altitude. The aircraft itself was too high to see. Apparently it was a sonic boom, from one of the Marine Corps jets from the air station nearby. About a minute later there was a double BOOM-BOOM, and this time we could see no plane, but they were up there because occasionally another thread-thin vapor trail would show up on a weird looping trajectory. I guess they were practicing dogfighting.

Wednesday I worked in the lab, but Thursday we were back at the buoy running some tests for unexpected problems we found on Tuesday. This time we took along snorkle gear to look at the fish schooling under the buoy. Visibility was 50-60 feet. We should have taken fishing gear, since there were several dolphin (the fish type) feeding on the little fish!

Friday I had to make a quick run to Chapel Hill and back for a doctor's appointment. Everything checked out OK.

I've just about decided to go ahead and buy a sailboat and live on it rather than waiting and renting a place for a year. Currently the model I'm most interested in is a Southern Cross 31, which is not too expensive (used), very cool-looking, roomy enough to live in, and a very capable blue-water boat as well.