Scratching our heads...

Stuck on the electrician's door

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while... We have been a bit buffled by what we're finding here, or rather not finding. We've been working hard, discussing a lot, sleeping very little, drinking a bit, some times in celebration of a good day of findings others in contemplation of a troubling day of findings. Indeed our feelings have been yo-yo-ing a lot. One day we're full of jubilation, the next we're biting our lips, nails, anything that gives each person comfort. On Thursday we reached the half-way point of the cruise, we only have less than two weeks to go and yesterday there was an air of disappointment amongst the planning group as it crossed our minds that we may be in the wrong place looking for the 1929 deposit... I can tell you it wasn't a good feeling. We altered slightly the plan for the day, while we remained skeptical and deeply concerned...

In parallel, and this is important, the shop we have here onboard hadn't opened in about ten days, so we were out of treats, things that keep us going; for some it was gummy bears, for others it was salty sticks and chips (crisps), for me it was a severe lack of chocolate. Peter, one of the guys in team extreme (coring team), said to me "I have this vision that as soon as you get your chocolate all the pieces will fall into place and you'll come up with the answer", my response was to laugh out loud because he had deeply comprehended how much I needed my chocolate :) Last night the shop opened, I got my chocolate... what an incredible satisfaction!!!! We finished with coring, splitting, describing, wrapping, cleaning at 11pm last night and then I went to bed, instead of staying up drinking with the others. 

The sediments are taunting me, turbidite mud that looks a lot like chocolate mousse. The texture is also identical! Everyone just wants to grab a spoon!

This morning after a good night's rest and having satisfied my chocolate craving I looked at the cores again and an idea did pop into my head, discussed it with Sebastian and the team, smiles came back on the faces and now we have a new working theory, and perhaps afterall, we're not in the wrong place. Peter looked at me and said "I knew it"  hahahahaha. Sleep and chocolate, that's all you need, the simple things in life. So after a bad and worrying day yesterday we are now back on track, and right on time because today we're having the mid-cruise barbecue out on the deck, so it's a party tonight and it would really taint the evening and the mood wouldn't be right if we were still so deeply concerned, unhappy and in fact a little bit lost (at least that's how I had starting feeling). 

We had a mysterious visit from a dragonfly... No idea how it got here and what it's doing in the middle of the ocean. Maybe caught a ride with a ship that passed this area before us... Could this be a good omen..?

This is not out of the ordinary when you are doing pure exploration in an unknown area. It's not easy and it's obvious that you need to have accumulated experience from lots of areas around the world, not just one or two places. This is what I meant the other day when I said that to do proper exploration and research, you need to be able to keep an open mind and be prepared for your ideas to come crumbling down the more data come in, believe the data, not your ideas, the data don't lie. Anyway, now we can all enjoy ourselves, we have a new working theory, and that may well prove wrong too, but at least we have a way forward again.

Photographing the core... Mission impossible, even Tom Cruise would be jealous.

Preparing for the barbecue tonight we have to clean the sedi-lab... Difficult task but many of us. Sweeping, scraping, hosing down, And now it's ready to host a party :)

Sedi-lab before...

Sedi-lab after...

My next post will be happier and will have pictures from the party, I promise!