Packing for 3 am departure

I am busy packing for my 3 am pick-up tomorrow morning. Tim and I are taking the 3:30 am airport shuttle from Monterey to SFO for our 7:30 am flight to Honolulu. The good news is we both got TSA Pre-check, so we don't have to undress and un-pack everything to go through security screening.

Packing for Palmyra is always a challenge. First and foremost are the weight restrictions for the flight from Honolulu to Palmyra. In the past we flew on Gulf Stream jets, but the new contract The Nature Conservancy negotiated has us flying on a Falcon50. The Gulf Stream is a two engine private plane while the Falcon50 has a third jet in the tail in addition to the ones on the wings. The other difference is the Falcon50 holds a slightly smaller number of passengers. While the interior is luxurious compared to most first class accommodations on commercial flights, there is no room for large carry-on bags. You are restricted to a small backpack weighing no more than 10 lbs. My backpack will have things like my passport, laptop computer, iPad, underwater & terrestrial camera, critical papers, etc.

items going in my backpack not including my laptop

For my carry-on I am packing a lot of items that would be difficult to replace should my checked bag get lost. It includes cameras for the microscope and photo stand, a GoPro camera for filming fish interacting with the settlement tiles in situ, various cables, batteries, an external hard drive for backup, data sheets, some personal dive gear, and a minimal amount of clothes. You don't need much in the way of clothes since the staff does your laundry for you daily except on Sunday. I live in swim trunks and t-shirts on Palmyra. The weight limit for "personal gear" is 30 lbs.

items going in my carry-on bag

Fish & Wildlife has been beefing up the biohazard protocols to prevent foreign seeds and insects from invading the atoll. Clothes worn on Cooper Island where the marine station is located must be washed in hot water, dried with high heat, packed in zip-lock bags and then frozen for 48 hours. If you want to go on any of the other island, you must have brand new clothes, shoes, backpack, etc. that are placed in zip-lock bags and frozen for 48 hours.

This year I am bringing more gear than I did in 2014, and we will also be bringing back all the settlement tiles with us on our return flights. Therefore, my checked bag this year is a large ice chest. Our original plan was to use the generator room on Palmyra to dry our settlement tiles before placing them in individual zip-lock bags, wrapping them in bubble-wrap, and then stacking them in ice chests. The problem was Palmyra has gone "green" using solar and wind to power the island the majority of the time. The generator serves as backup and is used infrequently. This is a good thing, but it meant we had to come up with an alternate plan to dry the tiles. There is an old, non-functioning freezer that we are planning to use in combination with either heat lamps or a space heater. Those are some of the things that are going in the ice chest. We are allowed 25 lbs of "additional gear".

items going in a large ice chest

I will be re-packing everything once I am in Hawaii as the risks are different for the two flights. The risk on the flight from SFO to HNL is having the bag lost and not found until the next day which is too late since I will already have left for Palmyra. I put things in the ice chest that, should it get lost, could potentially be replaced with a mad shopping spree in the half day we have in Waikiki. However, that carry-on bag with all the fragile gear has to go in the cargo hold on the flight the next morning on the Falcon50 since there is no overhead storage in the plane's cabin. Here there is no risk of the luggage getting lost. Rather the concern is damage to the fragile equipment. So some things will come out of the ice chest and go in my soft-sided carry-on to make room in the ice chest for cameras, etc.