Uruguay, how can I say this, was not exactly a vacation resort. It was a working industrial port. The city of Montevideo was less than aesthetically pleasing on the best day, yet was a nice enough for a non-Spanish speaking American to not feel too terribly uncomfortable.
Month: March 2013
Walking onto the KNORR was one of the single most intimidating things I could have ever done. Having not been out of the country except to Bermuda, which if you ask a world traveler from the US doesn’t count. I had no clue what to expect of South Africa. First let’s start with the Johannesburg Airport. It is completely insane. It was the single most confusing place I have ever had the misfortune to step. People luckily spoke enough English I was able to find my plane in the Fugue state that only an international overnight flight can put you in. I landed delicately later that evening in Cape Town knowing only that some random stranger should have a sign with my name, and the ships name on it. He did, which made the rest of the evening uneventful and not really worth recounting save the fact that I rode with the Chief Engineer back to the vessel.
So there I was with one suitcase, an olive drab sea bag, and my 72 hour backpack. Everything I needed for the next six months had to be in there, if it wasn’t, I hope I won’t need it. I saw the KNORR which is an impressively weathered (in the good way) ship dimly lit with sodium lights and slight haze that smelled sweetly of diesel fuel. I was getting ready to spend the next month and a half aboard the ship that found the HMS TITANIC! The concept really didn’t sink in for quite some time about how unique of an experience this was going to be.
The science operation we were going to be conducting was the last of a time series studying the Aghullas current under Dr. Lisa Beal from the University of Miami. During the mooring recovery ops we are scheduled to do several, 40+, CTD casts. My main duty during the day was deck leader of the CTD casts. Basically aboard the KNORR there are 4 people working to deploy and recover the CTD. The most important person being the winch operator, who is in charge of lifting this several thousand pound (KNORR has a very heavy rosette for enabling deep casts) and getting it over the side safely. There are then the tag line operators whose job is to keep the CTD from swinging while it is being delicately maneuvered over the side of the deck. Then there is me, with the rather odd title of deck leader. Basically I just watched and made sure no one was doing anything wrong that would get them injured or killed. I told the winch operator when to start the initial test descent, and well that’s about it. Until things go bad, and when they go bad it happens very quick. And one day it did. The seas were rough, but no horribly so. The wind was blowing maybe 20kts and the seas were a little rolly but nothing that should endanger anyone. The CTD came out of the water and instantly started spinning. One of the line tenders hooked the line and started pulling the CTD in. The second line tender was having difficulty with the pelican hook, which is on a pole roughly 12 feet long, so you can imagine how ungainly that is in the best of times. She couldn’t hook it, and the CTD started swinging side to side as we took a large wave. The line that was attached went slack as the CTD came careening back toward the ship. The attached line jumped over the struggling tender’s body and now she was in the bight of the line. I grabbed the line and screamed her name right as the CTD swung out and the line went taught slamming into the side of her neck. During instances like this time has an odd way of slowing down so each heart beat feels like an hour. I saw the rope hit her neck; I had grabbed it hoping I could keep it from completely looping around her neck. Her head went sharply and suddenly to the left as the line attached to CTD and tugger went taught. Her hard hat was knocked off her head. I ran up to her yelling her name several times, not sure if in the three feet I needed to traverse, she would slump over dead. My heart was racing; I grabbed the pelican hook pole and told her to get back to the safe area. I pulled the CTD and finished the op in the standard way. This was also the final CTD recovery of the trip, so all hands were on deck watching this rather ceremoniously. After I called the bridge to inform them the CTD was safely in the hanger and the ship could get underway again I went to my bunk and cried for 20 minutes. The girl was fine, completely unphased by the situation. She didn’t have to see it from my angle.
I have seen many things in my 34 year life. Not a lot scares me. Getting caught in the bight of a working rope is one of them. I was confronted with the power of what we work with every day. You never know what the sea has in store for you. She is ever changing. She is beautiful. She is violent. She is unforgiving. You can’t wonder what if, or how could we have handled this differently in a situation like that. It happened; split second reflexes are the difference between life and death. Being able to work through the adrenaline, and not succumb to its more irrational effects is paramount to resolving life or death situations.
I got to Miami in another red eye flight fugue. Exhausted and relatively confused from the cab ride I walked onto a new ship, this time, the Walton Smith. I was greeted by Dennis who is to be my new mentor on this leg of my journey in the world of the Marine Technician. He gave me exactly enough time to unpack my gear and told me it was time to get to work. I began by assembling a strange contraption called a MOCNESS. This bizarre device gets its name from being a Multiple opening and closing net and environmental sensing system…Basically it looks like a series of nets strung together on four bars. You can open different nets at different depths in order to sample the plankton at those different depths. Luckily I had read the manual to this device prior to boarding the Smith knowing that I would be dealing with this thing. I didn’t however expect to be assembling it less than 2 hours after landing back in the United States, after one of the most torturous flights I have ever taken.
I spent the next week assembling this device, assembling a CTD and repairing the niskin bottles on its rosette. We then left on a four day transit to Gulf Port Mississippi, where the science party would board. We arrived at night, rather uneventfully. The next morning the Science party would begin to load their gear, and we were scheduled to depart that Thursday.
The science party began unloading their three 20 foot long uhauls at around 10am. The seas in the harbor were a little rough, but nothing that should hinder work. Around noon everyone broke for lunch. The small mess deck was crowded with around 20 people hungrily eating a skillfully prepared lunch. We are lucky to have a rather wonderful chef aboard this small crowded vessel. I ate quickly, and retired to my bunk to get away from the crowd of new people that were rather raucous. The winds rather noisily began to pick up. I was reading more about the MOCNESS and its operational procedures when I felt the ship lurch hard to port. The wind began picking up and howling in a very unsettling frequency that can only be likened to the feral growling of a dire hound. The ship shuttered hard nearly throwing me out of my top bunk. Luckily for me my reflexes were quick enough to avoid the 5 foot fall onto the floor.
Startled and hyper alert I stumbled out of my berth greeted by the scene of scientist bracing themselves in door frames and several holding on for dear life to the nearest stable surface. I made my way through the throngs of unnerved people to the port holes in the galley. There I was greeted with the ship facing bow to the dock. For a second I wasn’t sure if this was a dream and I was safely asleep back home, then I heard the loud shuttering snap of our bow line giving way in the strong gusts of wind. We broke free of the dock and were headed for the rocks and old parts of the pier that were next to where we were docked less than 5 minutes prior. A load creaking noise echoed through the ship. I made my way quickly to the fan tail to see if I could lend hand to the crew who were outside dealing with god knows what.
I was greeted with a howling wind and waves of nearly 7 feet high in the harbor. For a brief moment my heart sank as I looked around at the chaos of packing crates being tossed about and the wind blowing plastic lids quickly overboard. Then I heard one of the deck hand shout something that delicate ears should not hear. I spun in place and was confronted with the image of a massive barge on a collision course for our small aluminum ship. Thanks to the quick response of the Captain he had long ago, minutes, started the engines and had our ship under complete control. He motored us out of the way of this multi-ton barge which then careened side long into a large container ship that was parked near us. The barge scraped the whole side of the ship and finally came to rest on the rocks that nearly spelled the end of our science expedition.
We spent the next several hours in the middle of the harbor being thrown around like a cork in a giant Jacuzzi. Having seen the near doom of our small 96 foot ship twice in one day, I was relieved when the small storm finally passed us by enough to allow us to retie to the dock. After the hour or so of being bounced around in port I was more than happy to get on land and help crane the rather massive ROTV’s(remotely operated towed vehicles) out of the Uhaul trucks and on our small deck.
This time the power and fury of the ocean humbled an entire boat of people. We collectively saw the speed with which things can go from normal and mundane, to unforgettable when attempting to study the majesty that is the ocean. This time the ocean forgave our humanness, our fragile nature, our gung-ho attitude for the science which drives each and every one of us on a research vessel. This time we all gave thanks that none of the large instruments were being craned over to the ship when she broke loose. We gave thanks that no one was hurt. We gave thanks that our ship is captained by a very capable and knowledgeable individual. I gave thanks that I was here to witness this very rare event, and its successful conclusion. Science being conducted on the water is never a simple and straight forward thing. We are always at the mercy of the weather, the currents, and the ever changing tide of events that can spell disaster in seconds.
Working on a ship is definitely not always adventure, fun, and cool science. There are things to get accustomed to that can’t be accounted for no matter how carefully you plan your life. There are events that can conspire to tear apart the very fabric of your day to day reality. When every day is exactly like the last one, and you are on night shift, so you never really see day light time takes on a whole new meaning. Days aren’t days, time skews in a direction that is fundamentally inconsequential and frankly days get lost. I lost three total days quite literally. I thought it was Sunday when in fact it was Wednesday. I have never had this happen quite so fully. We all experience the waking up and thinking it is one day but it is in fact another. But this past two weeks has literally been Ground hog day for me every day. I awoke generally a couple hours before sunset, so mentally I wasn’t quite awake until after the sun went down. I had been getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night on a GREAT night. So by the end of two weeks I was run down, a little irritable, and completely not mentally on my A game anymore.
We unloaded the last science cruise, I finally got to do some laundry, then we began loading the next cruise just under 2 hours after we had finished re-arranging the deck for the next cruise. So between being sleep deprived for two weeks, standing in for a deck hand, helping pass countless large instruments across to a dock because we have no gangway, making sure the science party had all their things, then helping load on GIANT frames for acoustic devices, getting thrown around like a rag doll because they asked me to stand on one of the frame legs while it was raised into the air via a crane, waking up this morning to a torrential down pour in which we got underway, it had been a long few weeks. My mind is mush, my body aches, and I don’t know what day of the week it is because all the clocks on this ship read different days. It is a small boat, and impossible to get any alone time. So I spent the entire day in my bunk sleeping after we got underway.
But on the bright side I am learning about how the ADCP works, which is a fascinating piece of equipment that is constantly running in the background. It is one of the many pieces of equipment that the Marine tech must keep functioning at all times. ADCP stands for Accoustic Doppler Current Profiler. As I am sure most of you know the Doppler effect is how the pitch of a sound changes when an object if moving toward you or away from you. It is the same thing old school police radar used, and what the weather man uses in order to show you groovy cloud formations moving over your area and bringing you either happy rain or beautiful sunny days. Well the ADCP sends out a sound pulse and uses what are called scatterers that bounce back the sound in order to determine which way the current is going. Typical scatterers are Euphasiids, pteropods, and copepods to name a few. These planktonic creatures are fairly well distributed in a given water column. The typical ADCP unit has 4 transducers that is oriented in a specific way in relation to the ship. By knowing the orientation of these transducers, along with the use of our various navigation systems of which GPS is a component we are able to deduce the rate of flow of the current, it’s direction, and it’s depth.
At first thought the ADCP doesn’t sound like it would be a piece of equipment that needs to be run all the time, but you have to remember our ships are meant to be able to stay in one location very precisely in order to deploy various equipment. So we must be able to compensate for the current that is at the surface affecting the ship, as well as the currents at depth where the instrumentation may be experiencing different forces. So this is just one of the many behind the scenes pieces of equipment that without our job would be nearly impossible. Next week I think I will tell you about the POS/MV which stands for Position and Orientation System for Marine Vessels. This piece of equipment is very intricate and EXTREMELY important in day to day functioning.
This internship is coming to a close for me. I have been doing the MATE/UNOLS thing since February 10th when I first flew to Cape Town to get on the KNORR. It has been a singularly unique experience in my life thus far. I have seen things and done things I never thought imaginable. I have met people I never would have, had I not taken that giant step and applied. I have been places that none of my friends have been, and some places none of them will ever get to go. For god’s sake I got a tour of the inside of the new ALVIN submersible twice. I found out that people value my input on technical problems, and that my solutions sometimes are rather unique.
This internship is not a walk in the park; it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I have been physically removed from my family and friends for nearly a year. Granted this is cake walk compared to the isolation friends of mine in the military have endured, but I am not that courageous. I am generally a socially gregarious person in that I always have friends around unless I am embroiled in studying prior to an exam. I used to do my homework in a bar. So you can just imagine how not used to being alone I am. Right now I feel very alone, most the time during the internship, you have people you are friendly with, but it takes a long time to develop those friendships where you can just spill your guts about how you are feeling. You don’t always have that outlet. Have a friend back home prepared for the email rants that will likely ensue as you shift your whole world view. You are settling into a new lifestyle. Being a marine technician is much more than just a job, it is fundamentally a lifestyle, and it’s one of those things you are either ready for or you aren’t. Don’t feel bad either way.
You will begin to make friends with people who share in your new life, these people are indispensable at helping you navigate this whole new world that isn’t quite as easy to understand as you might think. Just the vocabulary you need to learn to become competent is quite different than the vernacular you would generally use in most work places. Not many jobs have their own words for left and right, front and back, but sailing does, and learning these words early will help you in ways you won’t quite understand till you are yelling at someone to grab the line on the port rail and they just stand there and stare at you.
You can’t be ready for everything though. Invariably something that no one thought that could happen will happen, and it is in these stressful tension filled times you can really help out. You can go back in the blog and read my entry about machining a bearing press when we were unable to easily pull the bearing from a seatel mount hiseasnet antenna.
So there is totally no way to predict with any certainty what you will be facing as the ship pulls away from the pier and science begins. All we can do is prepare ourselves in a general sense by understanding how systems function. Most things work as part of systems, so getting comfortable with seeing a piece of equipment in its constituent parts is a must. I just spent the last couple weeks tearing apart and fixing, successfully a camera pedestal for a TV studio quality camera. At first you might think, meh it’s a tripod, which essentially it is. But it also costs nearly $20,000, which is more than my car cost brand new. I had to rip this entire thing apart to change out three orings in the very middle, and we weren’t even positive that was where the problem really was. So I took it apart, found all the orings then had to wait for a week to get them, then put this giant monstrosity back together and this morning filled it with nitrogen. It is holding well.
So also be prepared to work on things whose price will terrify you. Be comfortable with getting elbow deep in things you have never seen before or taken apart. Trust in your ability to take things apart and find the faulty section. Have at least one friend who you are willing to become extremely closes with and share those times when you are terrified and feeling alone in the middle of the ocean. It can be a scary place. The loneliness at times can become all encompassing. The rewards for a job well done are the scientist may never have interrupted service time; their science can be conducted without worry that something may break and may not be fixed. They trust in you to know your stuff in a very general way, and across many fields of discipline.