Lazy Sunday and sandbags

Sunday 4.9.2016

High winds continued, and we did not even try to archaeological work today. Instead, a small group of divers, mostly cypriots, went to the site to put sandbags in 45m depth into plastic bags!

When the excavation is completed for this season, all parts of the wreck with exposed wood or metal will be covered with some 60cm of protecting sand. In the bow area we spent the 1st week of excavation in removing protecting sand that was placed there after the previous excavation had completed.

The project had bought a batch of at some 100 sandbags that were loaded with a large crane to our RIB in the harbor and then manhandled in a long chain from the RIB to the bow storage area of MS Queen Zenobia. The sand in the bags seeped through the fabric and at least I and my clothes were all in sand dust after the chain link manhandling. I needed a swim, and the clothes needed a wash.

Before the fieldschool had begun, they had already delivered 2 batches of sandbags, and they are all stored on the 2nd floor of MS Queen Zenobia. We were not allowed to place the new batch there, because the skipper was worried about ship stability. Those earlier sandbags have at least different colored bags - I have no idea if the sand is different or the same.

Some 30 sandbags were left in the RIB and then carefully thrown overboard just south-west of the Mazotos wreck. I happened to be the safety diver then, and took a video of it with my GoPro. It looked like a video game, where targets appear from top in seemingly semi-random order, and then just fall down slowly. However, there was no chance to "shoot" them down in real life. Even if you would have seen some of them aiming for amphorae, you could not have done anything.

10 second video of the sandbag "airdrop"

Sandbag "airdrop"

The sandbags were scattered on the sea bottom. Soon after that the visibility problems began. It is possible that the sand is so fine-grained that it just seeps through the fabric and makes a thin dust cloud to work area, at least with north-east bottom current (i.e., the current is from south-west). That is not good news as photogrammetry imaging for good 3D-modeling requires good visibility. Maybe the cheapest sand was not so good after all, or then there was a miscommunication somewhere.

Almost all of those sandbags on the seabed were placed into plastic bags today. That must have been "fun" job to do in 45m depth! This may help with the visibility problem for now, but it does not promise good for these sandbags and this sand in general. What good does it do to protect the excavation site with sand that just "evaporates" through the fabric and floats away in a dust cloud? If the sand is deemed to be too fine-grained, it can not be used at all and we have to replace it.

I was trying to go to Agia Napa today, to see Kyrenia II, which is the life size replica of the Kyrenia ship, and which has been built with ancient tools and methods. It would have been a little more realistic than the Kyrenia Liberty ship that I saw yesterday in Limassol. But not much. Most of Kyrenia II design is just made up guesswork, because so little of the original ship was really recovered. You can not really deduce what the the rigging system was like from bottom planks!

That was not to be. I had scouted a suitable bus connection from Larnaca to Agia Napa, but I could not get any ride from Mazotos to Larnaca. I ended up having a very relaxing loitering day in High View Gardens and in Mazotos village.

Mazotos village is quiet empty on Sunday afternoon

Mazotos village

I went for a walk in Mazotos village, and lunched at our usual tavern. There are not very many restaurants or cafes to select from in Mazotos.

Two birthday cakes for Ray was plenty for 16 people having dinner tonight. Ray is the 4th person on the right with blue shirt.

We had our usual dinner at the tavern at 19:30. We are now on the 2nd rotation of the menu. So today we had the same meal as day 2 of the fieldcamp, and then tomorrow we have a pork chop like we had on the 3rd day. But today we also had dessert, as it was Ray's birthday.  Everyone (including those who had left the fieldschool already) had signed the birthday card. Happy birthday, Ray!