Sunday, March 7, 2004

Traveling from the Gulf of Papua towards Cairns, Australia

Early this morning at the end of the last coring shift, about 5:00 am, the R/V Melville increased her speed to 12.6 knots and began the trek to Cairns, Australia. We are set to arrive at 8:00 am on Tuesday, the 9th of March.

How do we travel from the Gulf of Papua to Cairns or from point A to B? As defined by the Dictionary of Nautical Words and Terms navigation is the art and science of conducting a ship from one place to another. In the bridge of the R/V Melville today most of the navigation remains similar to how things were done 100's of years ago. The officers will pull out a paper chart and plot where they want to go on the chart with parallel rulers, a divider and a pencil, and list the way points and measure the distance between the way points - a way point is where a ship will change direction to avoid shallow areas, wrecks, islands etc. Joe, the 2nd Mate and navigational officer onboard will then put these positions in the electronic chart along with information from the GPS (Global Positioning System) and speed to get more accurate distances and bearings. The ship then maintains the course to their destination electronically.

Our trip South to Australia along the Great Barrier Reef has been very smooth, however, you notice that we are moving faster now going from around 5-6 knots to nearly 13 knots, by the shaking of the ship. We hear the steel cabinets in our room as they tremble from the power of the engines. I am trying to get back on a normal sleep schedule after having worked at night for the past three weeks. The coring took place from around 8 pm - 7 am to avoid the hot hours of the day working under the sun. Also, the Chirp was run during the day in order for the bridge to be able to see and avoid the many palm trees and large logs that we often saw, especially near the mouth of the Fly river.

We are now cleaning the ship, packing cores and equipment away to be shipped back to the states from Cairns, packing our belongings and closing up our work here in the Gulf of Papua. I too will be saying goodbye today. I hope you have enjoyed this journey as much as I have. I'd like to thank several people for their work in the creation of this site. First, my husband, J.P. for his enthusiasm for this project and his time and energy writing science content, creating all of the figures you find on this site, and editing. I'd also like to thank Wayne Suiter at Scripps and his team who have spent numerous hours building the PNG S2S web site. My thanks to the researchers from University of Washington, University of South Carolina, The College of William and Mary, Penn State University, East Carolina University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography for helping me understand their research and sharing their experience with me. Thanks to the Captain, technicians and crew of the R/V Melville for answering my numerous questions and letting me explore the R/V Melville. Thanks to Cheryl Peach and Nigella Hillgarth for their support of this project and finally, thanks to Neal Driscoll for running with this idea, and his creativity. It has been a wonderful experience for me, and I hope for you the reader. Please feel free to continue to send in your questions to FlyRiverS2S@rv-melville.ucsd.edu and check back now and then, as we will continue to add features to the site such as a diagram of the Melville and journals and photos from the first leg of the cruise.

That's all from Papua New Guinea for now, thank you for taking time to share the adventure!

Best regards,
Denise Walsh

Today's weather and location at 1300 (thirteen hundred hours, military time for 1:00 pm)
Air Temperature: 28°C (82°F)
Water Temperature: 29°C (84°F)
Salinity: 34 PSU
Barometric Pressure: 1007.9 mb
Relative Humidity: 81%
Precipitation: 19.5 mm

Longitude: 10° 19.012' S
Latitude: 144° 39.439' E