We had an uneventful (that's good!) transit over from Suva, passing a few islands owned by Tonga that looked like the tops of sharply peaked, green felt hats rising from a dark blue sea. Those exotic islands of King Kong movies now don't seem so make-believe. We docked in Pago Pago, American Samoa at 0930 on this our second Friday, Aug 30, thanks to coming east across the Intn'l Dateline. To make up for it we'll have to skip one of the upcoming days on our way west again. We've made this detour to pick up the seismic streamer shipped here several weeks ago. After a 2-hr shore call where several scrambled to find last minute items in local stores, we were all back on board and the crew cast us off shortly before 0100. Work will begin in the cool of the evening unpacking the six 100-m hydrophone sections just brought aboard, and we'll start making up, testing and winding them onto the awaiting reel centered on the fantail. Several electrical lines have been run into the computer lab; more are to be done. Software for seismic recording and QA/QC needs to be tested. Other chores over the next several days involve assembling the core splitter and core storage racks, laying out a core description / sampling area and devising a method of photographing split cores. With a little diligence there ought to be time for a few games of ping-pong. --- Greg Mountain
