This morning I was able to change my reservation from Tues morning to tomorrow morning to fly to Istanbul. There, I will get on the Piri Reis for a 2 or 3 day cruise surveying the part of the main active strand of the North Anatolian fault that we could not survey in 2008 because of ship traffic. This is multichannel seismic reflection data so we will be towing some kind of streamer behind the ship, going at 4 knots (about 7 km/hr) through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world just outside of the Bosphorus. We will have some kind of Turkish coast guard escort; we did not last time.

I won't have internet on the ship unless something changed since 2008, so will let you know how it goes when I get back in a week.

I guess I better pack; 4 AM is only 6 hours away.

Chris