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Speaking of the JOIDES Resolution, as I was in a recent post, that scientific cruise was a lot of fun. We spent most of the time in the Indian Ocean, out of sight of land. Although we did go by Krakatoa. It didn't explode while we were ther,e thank goodness. The Resolution was a drillship. It spent its life roaming the world's oceans and drilling holes in the sea floor to see what it was made of. The way this worked was, one or several scientists would submit a proposal to go to a certain area and try to solve a particular question about the history of the oceans. If the proposal was accepted, they did not have enough people from their own institutions to take all the jobs, because the ship needed a couple of dozen scientists of different stripes to do all the work. [There are also sailors, as well as support staff from the host institution, Texas A&M.] Not terribly long before cruise 123 set sail, I lost my job and I was looking for any way to make money. I applied to the Ocean Drilling Program to be one of the "other" scientists on a cruise. I had never worked in oceanography, but I had spent a lot of time looking at ancient rocks that had been deposited on seafloors. So then I got a real job, and after I'd been there a while I got the call to go on the cruise to the Indian Ocean. well, I really wanted to go, and my boss let me, because in order to make sure that the people they wanted got permission, the ODP paid me my salary and paid it to my boss as well. That was so he could replace me if needed, but of course he just pocketed the money.

We had 12-hour shifts when the ship was on site. So we sailed, if that's the correct word, to each planned drilling location, and then parked on site. The drillship had an actual drilling platform amidships, right in front of the helicopter landing pad, and we had to stay in position while we were drilling through in some cases thousands of feet of the seafloor. Every so often the drill string would be pulled out of the hole [we used a hollow bit so we could get a cylindrical core of what was under the sea]. My job, along with those of several other people, was to look at the cores, which had been sliced in half the long way (I had studied cores before, but of solid rocks, not soft seafloor sediments). This was a lot of fun. The drill site was way out in very deep water, and the planners had expected to find some of the oldest oceanic crust anywhere in the world ocean, and not too far below the sediment surface. They did not notice there was a submarine canyon at the edge of the continental shelf aimed straight at the site where we were drilling. So we saw the results of density flows, called turbidites, stacked on top of each other for thousands of feet. these were very pretty, at least if you like different shades of green alternating with one another. We did eventually reach the oceanic crust, and you can read all about it in a big fat book.

I worked nights, which means I got off work in time to see the sunrise everyday. We watched flying fish leaping out of the water in front of the bow, and watched movies on laser discs, which were then a very modern thing. The cafeteria was staffed by three Portuguese cooks. They were good cooks, but one day they tried to cook American hamburgers. I have never tasted anything with that combination of seasonings before or since, and I doubt that they would be used together in any American kitchen. it was good though.

The cruise began and ended in Singapore, so I had a total of two days to see that city-state. I never expected to be there at all, so this was a lot of fun. drinking pints of beer, visiting Indian temples, and seeing tombstone-cutters shops, I could never catalog all the sites that I saw (only a tiny fraction of what the city has to offer). Singapore is known for its batik and its gold jewelry. I bought a large batik sheet, intended I think to be cut up to make clothing. When I get home is when I found out my wife doesn't like the color brown. She thought I should have known it already, but forgave me. And I've remembered it for 36 years. So has she.