Pseudoholomorphic Strips in Symplectisations I: Asymptotic Behavior

This paper is part of a larger program, the investigation of the Chord Problem in three dimensional contact geometry. The main tool will be pseudoholomorphic strips in the symplectisation of a three dimensional contact manifold with two totally real submanifolds $L_0,L_1$ as boundary conditions. The submanifolds $L_0$ and $L_1$ do not intersect transversally. The subject of this paper is to study the asymptotic behavior of such pseudoholomorphic strips.