Alan Nelson's Daily Commentary for 30 August 1999

Kwajalein (Day 12), Republic of Marshall Islands

Today wasn't a picture-taking day. I have been saving this picture just in case that happened. While biking on the island one afternoon last week, I saw these women walking down the street in identical, native Marshallese outfits and thought it would be interesting to take their picture but I didn't want to impose and I was in a hurry. When riding back the same way about half an hour later, they were all sitting under these palm trees just as you see them. I really didn't ask them to pose for this! This gorgeous setting lies between the Kwaj Lodge (the best housing on the island for visitors) and the airline terminal. Those two buildings were carefully excluded from this picture!

It's hard to know exactly where I should be calling home base right now. Certainly my room in the Pacific Bachelor's Quarters (universally referred to here as the PBQ) has been home base until now. Tomorrow I will be going to Meck for most of the next two weeks, but we will need to return to Kwajalein Island to replenish groceries. Each grocery trip will mean someone will need to stay overnight at Kwajalein and so I won't be checking out of the PBQ. Plus we are going to try to rotate the three of us so that we can get off the island of Meck every now and then just so we don't get claustrophobic!So today has been a bit of a logistics day. I was running out of the few Sudafed that I had brought along with me and so I went to the local 10/10 store to restock. Unfortunately, they only stock Sudafed Plus, with chlorpheniramine maleate, the decongestant that knocks me unconscious for half a day and pretty druggy for the rest of the day. So I called the medical service to see if anything else was available on the island. Today is Monday in the Marshall Islands, but it is the second day of their normal Sunday/Monday weekend. The woman who answered the phone was the doctor on call for the weekend and she said to come over and she could fix me up. Indeed, I now have, via a prescription, a box of the generic form of Sudafed, which is a non-prescription medicine. Though the doctor had answered the phone, written and filled the prescription, she didn't do bill collecting. The arrangement is that the next time I am on Kwajalein during the day, I am supposed to go over and pay for my medicine. Needless to say, the medical-care system is a bit different here than back home!

I also needed to get over to the grocery store to pick up some food for the next several days. I am planning to use the lunch service for my big meal of the day, bagel and cold cereal for breakfast, and something small for dinner. I may join in the tethersonde eating arrangements, but figured I better have some food for the next couple days. I have a couple frozen dinners and bread and vegetables and fruit juice. I'll be fine for a couple days.

The move to Meck indicates that the radiosonde equipment is working. Two sondes were put up today. One reached above 300 millibars and one got over 100 millibars. That is quite acceptable to the scientists using these data.

Just a note on millibars: when a sonde ascends, it starts at approximately 1,000 millibars when it is on the ground. After is has risen above 10% of the atmosphere, it has reached 900 millibars, 20% means 800 millibars and so one. So a sonde going to 100 millibars is much higher than one going to only 300 millibars. But also keep in mind that bars and millibars are units of pressure. The lower layers of the atmosphere are much more dense than the upper layers and so a sonde doesn't have to go very far in altitude to go from 1,000 to 900 millibars. It requires much more ascent to go from 400 to 300. Tomorrow I will try to summarize the data from one of our sonde releases and you can see what I mean.

I also had an opportunity this afternoon to go out on a small boat to a "coral head" in the middle of the Kwajalein lagoon. A coral head is a spot surrounded by deep water that rises up close to the surface. It is usually a very good source for fish. Everyone else on the boat was scuba diving, I was snorkeling. My snorkeling buddy didn't show up and so we had to go without him. I have never been a real fan of boats. I had sort of reached a peace with them that I don't go on boats too often and they in turn don't make me very sick. However, today I discovered that that only works with moving boats. In order to get the divers in the water, we needed to anchor the boat, get tanks on, regulators set up and all that stuff. I just needed to put on my flippers, mask and snorkel. While sitting in a small boat rocking in medium waves, my stomach was telling me maybe this had been a bad idea. So I got out of the boat as quickly as I could and scouted out the coral head a bit. It was a small one, maybe 20 yards across and reached up to about 15 feet of the surface. When I first looked at it, I didn't see any fish. The longer I waited, the more fish came out of hiding places. We had circled in the boat and probably made a bit of a ruckus in getting the two anchors set, so we're guessing the fish just went into hiding.

The scuba divers started down along the side of the coral head while I stayed at the boat. I could watch them down to about 50 feet. The water was extremely clear, but it was an overcast, gray day. A few minutes after the divers disappeared, a school of several hundred fish came up to the surface and joined me. They were each 2 to inches long and a luscious pale blue that turned green or black at certain angles. The coral head also became alive with fish. I would guess I saw three dozen different kinds, up to a little over a foot long. The divers encountered three sharks on their dive, one of them as big as the swimmers! While their hearts were racing with sharks, I was getting pretty tired of bobbing up and down on the waves. I found that hanging onto the anchor ropes steadied me somewhat, but what I was most afraid of was getting under the bow and getting conked on the head! By the time the divers got back to the surface, they decided that the surface was rough enough that we would all be smart to get our little boat back to harbor. Snorkeling on rough water isn't all that pleasant, but it may be the only time I get a chance to snorkel in the middle of the lagoon--and it was well worth it.I am off to Meck on the 6:00 AM catamaran. Some changes need to be made to our phone lines on Meck before I can get an outside line to download my journal. The change has been requested, but if it takes a day or two before you hear from me next, blame it on the phone lines!!

Alan Nelson