DAY 5: JULY 25, 1997

Position at Midnight:
Latitude: 31 deg, 13.0 min. N
Longitude: 59 deg. 07.3 min. W

Miles to date: 897 Miles Remaining: 871

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Seas remain calm, skies clear. The ship steams steadily toward Hole 395A. Everyone seems to be marking time. There are times when its possible to believe that you might be the only person on board. What activity exists is the steady work of preparing and testing the instruments and equipment for our arrival.

Even after four days on board matching names to faces is still a problem for many of us. The ships photographer, Tim Fulton, comes to the rescue. His real task is to photograph each core to create an archival record for researchers, but he obligingly shoots mug shots of the cruise participants by having us stand against the wall holding a piece of white paper bearing our name. They arrive later in the form of contact sheets in each person's mailbox. Its quite a rogues gallery.

Tonight, for the first time since leaving New York, we are told to move clocks will move forward for one hour. Surely we left the Eastern time zone long ago.


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