(Apollo 11 and her crew have been home almost 4 days, basking in the adulation of an admiring world, a world unaware that another NASA mission carries on, braving the cold, the darkness, the unknown, battling bacterial and air contamination, and the psychological toll that confinement, the cold, and sensory deprivation are exacting).

July 30^th, Day 16, and the food situation has become a problem. The hot water system has not performed well. The water is tepid, and it’s too early in the mission to use up valuable electricity to heat water. The crew reconstitutes freeze-dried rations with tepid water, and finds distraction between scientific duties in reading, listening to music, and playing games, like Scrabble and poker. Willy Nelson’s "On the Road Again" becomes a crew favorite.

August 1^st is Swiss National Day. Piccard and Aebersold call the President of Switzerland and send their best. But the Gulf Stream has another nasty surprise in store for them. Grumman scientists have been tracking the main core from the air and have detected another giant eddy in the current. It appears that the Franklin is going to be ejected again, this time to the west, toward the mainland.

The Franklin manages to avoid the eddy, as the central core of the Gulf Stream now turns to the east, and carries them away from Cape Hatteras. Tropical Storm Anna passes overhead, the Privateer is driven off station, but things are relatively serene in the Franklin. Busby wonders why more exploration and study of the oceans doesn’t happen underwater, away from the dangers of the sea surface and the weather. The crew reports seeing large numbers of blue, gray, and hammerhead sharks. Ken Haigh picks up dolphin and whale "conversation" around the sub as it drifts ever more quickly in the stream, with speeds up to 3 knots. As the sub drifts north, masses of plankton are drawn to the Franklin’s lamps, but the Deep Scattering Layer has not been located - and never is for the duration of the mission.

NASA observer Chet May, now three weeks into the dive, says he believes living in future space stations will be very like the way the crew of the Franklin has been living aboard. He’s observed the way the six crewmen have established routines and a social structure which he deems helpful in thinking about space station design. However, he admits that some things, like the dart throwing, will not transfer well to the weightless environment of space.

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