Homeward bound

Date: 2011/10/22
Time: 21:17:36 GMT
Latitude: 9 ° 59.7093 N
Longitude: 104 ° 5.2029 W

With little fanfare but much silent rejoicing, we point our sails homeward. There's still a great deal of work to be done by all of us, and yet a certain sense of finality has set in. I'm absolutely certain I will regret saying that even as I write it when I'm staring at an unprecedented weight of files to ping edit, but there it is. Kevin is currently working with the MAPRs, and he has assured us that data has indeed been collected. Part of our job for this upcoming transit will also be analyzing and visualizing this data in addition to the aforementioned ping editing. On a side note, the EPR area decided to give us a bit of irony right at the end of our time there by being uncharacteristically characteristic. After nearly two weeks of unruliness, clouds, rain, and waves, the water was like glass this morning, and the clouds were modestly distributed. Julie and I even saw a school of fish swimming along beside the boat for a while this morning. I have been assured that this is the image I should carry away of EPR, not the tempestuous sea that plagued us for a majority of the cruise. That's okay though; the days of storms are over, and seasickness is soon forgotten. Again, I am absolutely certain that I will regret saying that when, possibly very soon, the ship is crashing through waves on its way back to Panama while I lie in bed incapable of physical activity of any kind.