Daily Routine

Wed 10 June 2009
Sorry about the sporadic updates. A combo of busy-ness, fatigue, and impatience with the slow internet connections.
It occurs to me that I never explained specifically what I am doing here this summer. I think that I have already mentioned that I am participating in RPM Nautical Foundation’s survey of the coast of Albania, complementing what has been learned from multi-beam scanning and ROV exploration. But I can hear my mother shaking her head in gentle exasperation: What exactly does this mean? How do you spend your day? So, Hilde, this note is especially for you.
We start the diving day at 8AM; this allows us to get in several dives and return to the dock before the afternoon winds make the seas dance. I set my alarm for 6:45 but have fallen into the habit of waking up about 5:30 — giving me some quiet time to read before the day demands my attention. My favorite book so far has been John Hale’s just-published study of the navy and democracy in 5th-century Athens. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Athenian navy and its role in military and political strategies in the era of the Peloponnesian war.
My room is in the back of the hotel so I don’t know what the weather is until I go downstairs at 7:15’ish. The doors open to the sea and my first glance is to see whether the waves and wind are cavorting — will we dive today?

It takes me about 20 minutes to walk to the military harbor, where the RPM boats are docked. Our route is away from the center of town, through the market area and then further through a newly and quickly developing fringe area of small shops and apartment houses. The market happens every day, though Fridays are bigger, with the opportunity to buy live chickens and a greater assortment of used shoes than on the other days. The lady who sells mussels, shelled and stuffed into an old milk bottle won’t let me take the picture I would so like to share with you. The market covers both sides of a street for a length of what would be a short block in the US and also fills a large (40 x 100’) covered building. Most of the stalls are set up and thing are just beginning to operate in full swing as I walk by.

Then two crazy intersections, each with many streets converging and with no recognizable right-of-way and certainly no light. There are really not so many cars in this small city but they all are very earnest in their determination to be first through the narrow streets.
The reward for making it across the spaghetti of street crossings is breakfast. Most days I stop at a little hole-in-the-wall grocery and pick up a small loaf of a kind of nut-bread. The loaves don’t look like much: squashed flat, about a hand in length, four fingers at their widest, two fingers in height, dark brown with crumbled nuts, clumsily wrapped in cellophane. They are fairly dry to begin with and dry out more as the week goes on. Their taste is of that European genre of aromatic dry cookies. I relish my breakfast and I like the thought of participating in some mother’s or grandmother’s personal enterprise. The experience costs me 50 cents.

I try to wait until I reach the boats to eat, but it does not usually work out that way. I walk and munch my way against a stream of elementary school and junior high children. I enjoy walking among those young voices and contagious exuberance. Their grandparents walk many of them and there is a daily parable for me in the smooth little hands trusting in the calloused palms and age-bent fingers that guide them.


All such musing disappears into the business of the day as I approach the marina. Howard and Todd have a room there and the first stop is to pick up whatever lunch supplies might be needed on the boats: sandwiches, chips, fruit or candy bars if they are available, and, of course, lots of water. Then down to the boats. They are moored in the military harbor; it is the only suitable docking in the region for the Hercules (the big ship with the multi-beam and ROV equipment) plus it gives us a secure place to set up the three containers that hold the generator and compressor (used to fill our diving tanks), the recompression chamber (a safety device that I hope never to have to explain to you, mother), and our gear and tools. I think that it is probably very unusual to have a situation where foreign civilians are allowed to set up and work independently on a military base. Of course, there is a long story of the negotiations and determination that made this possible, but the essential factor is the good will of our hosts.

A camaraderie has developed between our crew and the marines who are stationed at this base and I pass through a series of good-morning greetings as I walk through the gate and down the hill, past the vegetable gardens for which Howard developed a sprinkler system, to the containers and the boats.
We have two boats that we use for diving, depending on how many of us go out. So far this summer, at its largest our group has numbered about a dozen. By 8 o’clock, food and gear and tanks are organized on board and we head out. The boats are fast and it is a chilly ride in the morning air to the site. We are working our way gradually along the coast but where we dive each day is determined by weather (the direction of winds and swells) but also by diving and search agendas. Right now, the ride out to the day’s site usually takes 30-45 minutes. It’s another great time of the day: humming along over the clear blue, watching mile after mile of spectacular and mostly pristine landscape, riding waves and wind, anticipating what we might find deep down today.
Most days we come up with little or nothing. But that, too, is information. And the process of getting that information is always fun. These weeks of the summer, I live to dive. On good days (when weather cooperates and the equipment holds up) we get two and occasionally three dives each. The water is cold and the hours between 9 and 1 are a mosaic of muted cold blue and hot bright intervals. (I’ll talk more about the diving in another note; this one is getting too long.)
Inevitably, the winds pick up, the swell makes itself known, and it is time to head in. We get back to the dock sometime between 1:30 and 3 and it’s time to unload the tanks, rinse all the gear in fresh water. The heart of the team — the guys who keep everything running — spend the next couple hours filling tanks and repairing equipment, sometimes “assisted” by eager interns who do eventually, if they stick around long enough and consistently, actually help. My job is to write up a dive report for the day, collated from the notes kept on board, as we were diving. Howard (among many other things) unloads and labels the photographs shot each day and sets up the cameras for the next.

I usually stop somewhere on the walk home for a bite to eat. In spite of all the eating and no exercise other than diving, I think I am losing weight. It must be the energy exerted underwater to keep warm. I found out yesterday that pretty much everyone else on the team also eats sometime in the afternoon. I get back to my room about 4, sweaty and salty. The shower feels wonderful. And then it is really hard not to nap. I managed to resist it the first week I was here, but now I give in, though I compromise by setting an alarm.
And then there is about an hour left before the evening dive meeting and dinner. The shops open again at 5 or 5:30 so I can run errands then. At 6:30 we meet for a debriefing about the morning’s work: the divers fill in the record of the day’s observations, adding details to the briefer notes kept on board; if there were any safety or equipment or people problems, we talk about them then; we discuss whether an area is finished, where to go next.
Dinnertime! We go out to restaurants. In this tourist town there are many and we are exploring, but often we return to proven favorites. Albanian food, insofar as we have found it in public places, is simple Mediterranean. I have not (yet) discovered anything especially “Albanian” though here in Sarande the mussels cultivated in Lake Butrint are a regional specialty. Pretty much every second or third evening the team votes for pizza. I mention again: we eat often and a lot (an entire 16” pizza per person is usual), and no one is gaining weight. A diving bonus. Check out Howard's helping of fries smeared with butter and tzatziki!
With the exception of one waiter in one restaurant, service is slow so it is 9 or 9:30 by the time we leave. The evening always ends with a stop at the ice cream stand, on the seaside promenade that takes us home.
By this time, my bed is calling, but if I have patience and any energy left, I stop off at the internet café. Tonight, I also have this message for you!

PS: A local specialty: mussels. Sold by the bucket.