Month: March 2016

Ok ok ok…I know I am already behind with my blog posts and I apologize for that but holy cow have things been busy!!  I have to back track a little bit to fill you all in so here goes:

                Last week we went out on a 2 day cruise that seemed pretty straight forward.  There was a crazy contraption that needed to go into the water, sink down, receive a signal from the surface, rise up, and get back on the ship.  Not too bad right?  Well considering this thing was a relatively large, 5500 lbs, and awkwardly shaped it didn’t take long for things to get a little twisted.

                The deployment of the contraption into the water wasn’t really all that bad.  It swung harder than we would have liked when it was lifted into the air and maybe made its way into the water in a moderately uncontrolled fashion but hey…it made it into the water.  Then there were a series of communication errors between the ship and the contraption but I’m going to gloss over most of that because it really didn’t affect me and the crew much…just freaked out the science guys.  Eventually the contraption accepted the signal to rise up from the depths and then we had to find it.  Easier said than done.  With the communication available to the team we were able to get in the right area and even pointed in the right direction but it still took quite a while until it was actually spotted.  It sat quite low in the water and there was no buoy or neon flag for us to see so I’m actually impressed that it didn’t take longer but maybe that’s just me:)

                Anyways…the fun really started when we were trying to get it back onto the ship.  This contraption (well…a similar one anyways) had been deployed before but never recovered so this was the first attempt to get it back on the ship EVER.  The captain was able to steer the ship from the back deck and reverse his way right on top of the contraption which was AMAZING in itself.  A tech was able to get a hook on the one available attachment site but unfortunately the second hook that needed to be attached to secure it to the ship wasn’t able to hook in time.  The result was watching the contraption slowly float away…

                The captain decided not to try that method again and sent out a small boat to meet up with the contraption, tie it up, and drag it back to the ship.  Thank goodness it was a calm day at sea or that wouldn’t have been an option at all.  Regardless, the small boat went out with 2 crew members and they were able to snatch the contraption and haul it back over to us.  Then the party really got going.  Trying to figure out how to get this thing back onto the ship and into its cradle without damaging anything was tricky.  It ended up taking the giant A-frame and winch, a secondary winch, the crane, ratchet-straps, tag-lines, and basically every able-bodied person that was near the area.  We eventually got it onto the ship and even in its cradle but it wasn’t positioned well so we had to try to get it seated properly which involved lifting the thing again.  It lifted, switched position, a strap broke, the thing fell a very short distance back into the cradle, BOUNCED…well and truly testing the integrity of the cradle and frame builders’ work, and landed more or less just where it needed to be.  Holy cow.

                While a lot of crazy things went on trying to figure out how to maneuver this contraption, at the very end of the day it did all of the things it needed to do, ended up back on the ship, nothing was damaged, and no one got hurt.  Not bad for a 2 day cruise:)

                Right after we got back in from that cruise we turned around and went out again on the 10 day trip I am currently writing you from.  Originally I wasn’t supposed to come out on this one because they were absolutely full and didn’t have any space for me but one of the scientists wasn’t able to make it very very last minute so I got to tag along.  Yay!

                I am super happy I got to come out on this trip…not just because that’s the whole purpose of the internship, but also because it is just packed with science things.  They are collecting almost every kind of sample that you could think of at all hours of the day.  I mentioned right at the beginning of this post that I have been busy and I meant it.  It seems like we deploy some piece of equipment, wait briefly for it to come back up, get it back on the ship and put away, and already the next piece of equipment is moving in.  It is really interesting watching all of these different things go out and chatting with all of the scientists to see what they are collecting and how they will use it and I am learning a TON but wow 12-hour non-stop shifts are exhausting.

                With that note it really is time for bed for me.  I have been working for the past hour trying to figure out how to add my photos (I had a really nice set of photos that helped tell the 2 day cruise story laid out for this post…honest I did) but it seems like I will have to figure out a different way because nothing I seem to do allows me to get an image displayed.  Sigh.  I will get Sonia to help me with it tomorrow since she is familiar with the drill.  Won’t she be excited:)

                 I know I owe a better description of the current cruise and I will get one out soon but I figured I would at least get a little bit of the story posted for now.  More to come as always!

Elizabeth

Hello everyone,
  It has been a very busy few days here so I will do my best to recap some of the highlights.  It all started on Thursday when I flew into beautiful Hawaii.  I was picked up from the airport and shuttled out to the RV Kilo Moana where I got enough of a tour to find my room, the food, and the emergency exit and then I was off to bed.  Friday I started that gloriously awkward stage (which I am absolutely still in) where I don’t know what is going on so I mostly just follow other people around and introduce myself all day.  Poor Sonia!  She was the tech that led me around and babysat me all day.  We ended up replacing the central piston and several sensors from the CTD device which took us the entire day.  It was hot and sweaty and required a lot of climbing in, up, and under the CTD carriage.  It was actually pretty fun:)
  The the weekend happened…and really no one else was here.  So I managed to use that time to sit out in the sun and climatize (AKA sunburn) and explore some more of the vessel in hopes that I could get down some of the bizarre layout.  I’m honestly still working on that one though.
  So Monday we finally left the harbor with a group of scientists ready to take some samples and the whole week of working with them was mostly a blur.  I learned the procedure for deploying the CTD (and a few other items) over the side of the vessel using the giant winch and A-frame set-up.  It is a lot of fun to get the CTD into the water and recover it again.  It involves hooks on poles and everything:)  I have also been trying to learn how to tie some real sea-worthy knots and apparently I am terrible at it.  At this very moment I have a string in my pocket to keep practicing.  I do really well with the string when I start with it in the same orientation but on deck I am often forced to tie that same type of knot backwards or left-landed or in some other weird way.  And yes…I’m terrible at it…to the amusement of my mentor…but hopefully getting better:)
  By Friday morning we had made it back into Honolulu and I was able to get through some of the end-of-cruise procedures.  Mostly just shutting down different systems and compiling all of the data collected over the course of the trip.  Nothing too crazy so far.

  With the end of the cruise AND a Friday to boot it didn’t take long for people to scatter.  Another quiet weekend here.  Because I spent so much of this first trip out just trying to learn every little thing that I could I didn’t spend a whole lot of time taking pictures…or writing a blog:/  I am hoping to do much better on both counts as I get better at this and more used to the schedule.  Seriously…I will work on it.

Until next post (with pictures…sigh)

Elizabeth