The next day we were able to backfill the hole around the barrel and build up the ground level a bit to make up for not being able to get the barrel down quite as far as planned. We used the large rocks we'd thrown out during the previous days, some imported sand from down the beach, and cement to build the mound.
During this day John left us. He didn't die or anything, it's just that he had been handing out cash at an alarming rate for over two weeks, and it was time for him to get back to WHOI and to the real world.
The Trillium 40 sensor from the company Nanometrics that we were installing at this station was designed and built by people that never left their nice, air-conditioned offices. There were a couple of marks around the base of the unit that made it easy to align when it was sitting on a nice, high pier in a nice, air-conditioned pier room. But in the real world the lack of markings made it impossible to align when looking down at it in a hole. We finally broke down and made some marks on the case in a place where we could see them from above as best we could with a Sharpie marker.
We poured water on the dirt and sand around the barrel to speed up settling as much as we could.
While we were at the hardware stores in Salelologa trying to put together enough parts to build a fence I saw this reinforcing "fence" that was made for putting into the wet cement of cement slabs. We had the hardware store where we found them cut one of the sheets in half. It provided just enough material to reach all of the way around the site.
An approaching squall on the right. "They come on you fast, and they leave you fast." -- Captain Ron
It didn't help a whole lot, but the tarp at least kept the wet cement from washing away while we finished spreading it around. I guess if you didn't work in the rain in Samoa you wouldn't get much done during some portions of the year.
Unfortunately it turned out that the quality of the batteries that we bought in Apia were less than ideal. In keeping with the spirit of the formation of the Samoan islands the battery we brought with us to Maota wouldn't quit erupting battery acid when it was just sitting on the floor and not even connected to anything. We managed to buy a replacement from a local place and it seemed to be a lot better. That was good since we'd bought the batteries in Apia and brought them with us because we didn't think we would be able to get any on Savai'i.
Hmmm...from the looks of things I guessed that that was enough fun for one day. The natives looked a little restless, and I didn't want anyone to get hurt, especially me. The guy on the right was Larry Tapu. He was in charge of things at the forestry division office and along with his guys helped us out a lot.
2014-07-24