Hello Jose et al.,

Very sorry to hear that the weather is treating you badly. As you will read below, so far we have been
fortunate, knock on wood.

This is our second day out and we are now past the tip of South America headed almost due south. Right
now we are at -53 03.423°S; -65 11.902°W and making about 12 kts. We are not yet out past the 200 mile
limit of Argentina - that will come tomorrow afternoon. The trip down along the east coast of Argentina was
pretty spectacular. In the morning there were high mountains to the west of our course with their tops shrouded
with clouds. Then in the afternoon, we steamed through a fairly narrow strait at the southern end of Argentina
where the mountains rose steeply out of the sea on both sides of the ship - really quite beautiful and wild looking.
The winds have been light today and the seas quite flat. There was a lot of sun mixed with clouds throughout the
day. The air has been cool - around 5 to 8°C. All in all a good day for a start of the cruise.

There were a lot of sea birds flying and the seabird ecologists were already at work counting them. They have a
small plywood enclosure - a wind break - out on the port wing of the bridge. There are plastic windows around the
top of the enclosure, so that a person standing up can easily sea 360 degrees and still be protected from the wind.
The marine mammal people were also active in surveying the area for whales. They were using the bridge and the ice
tower some two stories above the bridge, which itself is 5 stories above the main deck.

Once past the 200 limit, we will turn on the Seabeam system and start getting bathymetric data. We also plan to stop
in the late afternoon to deploy a Sonabuoy, shoot an XBT or two, and do a CTD cast. Then it will be more steaming.
We still have a couple of days to go before getting to the first survey station.

Although our acoustic noise problems are not as acute as they appeared to be on the Gould, we do have a significant
noise problem on the VPR data channels in BIOMAPER-II. Scott Gallager, Cabell Davis, and Andy Girard have been
trouble shooting most of the day and we have been in close contact with Tom Austin back at WHOI who was the
engineer that designed the telemetry portion of the BIOMAPER-II system. We should know by late tomorrow whether
there is a fix for the problem.

Not much else to report just now. We are still at the stage of getting ready for a long campaign, but not yet in it. But we
do have a request, Jose. If you took XBT's along your transit across the Drake Passage, especially in northern section,
would it be possible for you to send us the data from them. Eileen would like to have them to help her determine where
the various fronts are.

Good luck getting the landing party to the beach.

Cheers, Peter