My sleepless wanderings on the last night of our voyage lead me to the
bridge. The clouds to the east are lit from below with a yellow hazy
glow - Perth nightlights. The city itself is still under the horizon
but the towering lighthouse on Rottnest island periodically waves its
strobe our way. Recalling a simplified calculation that Nathan and I
performed yesterday, regarding how far we could see until the Earth
curves under the horizon - the city is at least 100km away.
No shift tonight. Once we entered Australian waters some 15 hours ago,
there was no need for further data logging since the international
dataset is pretty substantial over the continental shelf. Getting our
sleep cycles in order was of high priority even though a few others
and I are still walking up and down the corridors.
We have been commuting in a straight line for the past 3 days
collecting our last magnetic track. As a parting gift from Poseidon we
were offered 8 meter high waves with rolls of over 10 degrees. When it
was time to pull the magnetometer back in for the last time, I went on
deck to assist in manoeuvring it with ropes away from the side of the
ship. The waves were rising up like blue walls over our heads, coming
so close but never too close thanks to the ships buoyancy. Definitely
one of the exciting moments of the voyage. Its funny how seasickness
is amplified inside the ship whereas on the deck I couldn't feel a
thing. Maybe it was the adrenaline too.
Soon the pilot ship will be available to escort us into Freemantle
port. Getting the magnetometers loaned to us by the Australian
Geological Society shouldn't take too long and other than that only
the buckets of rock samples from the dredges will need to be unloaded.
In the next few months we will start to put together the clues we have
collected for the past 20 days. Magnetic tracks will help us gain
insight to the ancient spreading directions and rates of the Southeast
Indian Ocean, adding to the resolution of global tectonic kinematic
reconstructions. Thin sections of the many oceanic and continental
rocks we collected will be used to further constrain timelines and
raise new questions about what kind of margin or extinct ridge lies in
the Perth Abyssal Plain. Just imagine a huge chunk of continent,
braking off painstakingly slowly, tens of millions of years ago, and
being left behind as the rest of the continent speeds north perhaps to
create the Great Mountains of Asia. This may all be entirely premature
or even totally wrong - is that not the beauty of science?
Well Zohar, it has been a fascinating voyage along with you.Those waves you describe remind me of a near capsize of a yacht I was technically skippering some years ago outside Marmeris.It is a small , round , spinning world I believe.Yesterday in Paris I visited the spectacular Pantheon .There I encountered Foucault's Pendulum in motion, 60 metres from the dome and which apparently evidences the rotation of the earth on its own axis .My own head span trying to understand how the clear evidence ' on the floor' that the plane of the pendulums swing rotates 11 degrees per hour.I looked to see if the dome and building were not joined to the floor I was standing on.Not for nothing I studied liberal arts.Oddly,in the crypt of the Pantheon lie the remains of Victor Hugo , Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola and Marat (amongst others).Welcome to terra firma which may yet prove as challenging as those swells!
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