Now that the third week has come to a close and one half of my time aboard the R/V Atlantis is just about over I can really get a sense of what life is like working on a research vessel. First off any standers of a normal workday are gone. As one of my fellow Alvin workers said it best “everyday is like a Monday.” We wake up early every morning barely coherent, look for that pot of coffee and go through the same routine. With no weekends off and always have work to do you would think that this would make this life style unbearable but it is just the opposite. For everyone out here the benefits out way the cost. The biggest problem we’ll face is not the when the sub decides to misbehave but it is time. When you’re working with a piece of equipment that is designed to withstand more then 400 times the pressure of earths atmosphere. Along with having to have the sub ready every morning promptly at 7:30 so the science team can go down and collect the samples they need, time is not really on your side. Though we have been very fortunate this cruse that there have been no major issues with Alvin, even something as simple as an unwanted ground in the electrical system can set us back. When working in this type of environment the biggest key to success is work cohesion. Being able to get along with your coworkers is so important in this filed because you have to spend so much time together under high stress situations. As an intern the first thing I learned was to know when it was time to get in and help out and then when to get out of the way.
We have had 16 consecutive dives now with 21 total dives schedule for the science cruse. Keeping track of day-to-day events has been getting harder because everyday is the same thing and at this point it all starts to mix together. One day can feel like a lifetime but one week can feel like a day. Despite this I am still enjoying my time out here, I love the work and I’m enjoying the people. We are all quite literally stuck in the same boat. As the science cruse is coming to an end we are expected to be arriving into port either the 10th or the 11th. Once then we will say our goodbyes and head back out for the engineering segment. There are only 4 dives planed for the engineering cruse, were we will be diving to the subs current maximum depth of 4500 meters (14,763 feet). For a better example most naval subs cat go below a 1,000 feet (304 meters). At the depth of 4500 meters you will be experiencing 450 atmospheres worth of pressure. With experiencing 14.7 PSI (pounds per square inch) in one atmosphere, Alvin will be experiencing 6,615 PSI at 450 atmospheres. Once the engineering dives are over I will be staying on the ship for the 2-week cruse back to Woods Hole Massachusetts. I am not quite sure what jobs they will be having me do during the transit but I know I will be put to work.
Now on to the more interesting topic of what did I do this week? I am getting this blog out a little late again do to a network failure on Sunday and a series of unfortunate events on my behalf Monday night. The week started out just like any other. On Tuesday we had to take the battery that I have been working on out in order to begin cleaning of the battery hold for ship inspection. The cleaning didn’t start till Thursday and lasted over into Friday. Thursday was game night on the ship so a bunch of us got together and played some card games. On Friday we had gotten to a new dive cite and this one was only around 400 meters deep witch is very shallow for this sub. Strangely this became problematic because all the connectors on the sub are meant to perform at more extreme depths. We ended up having to deal with a ground in a cable witch was caused by a small amount of water making its way into the connector. We thought we fixed the problem the night before but the ground returned the fallowing morning and we had to postpone the dive till 11. These problems continued and on Sunday the sub had to surface half way through the dive because we got a ground in the hydraulic motor connection. This completely prevented any used of the mechanical arms on the sub so the dive could not be completed. We were able to quickly fix the problem and get the sub back into the water only 30 minutes later. Sunday night we got a massive storm witch prevented any use of the network and with the only free time I have is at night I could not get the blog out then. On Monday we moved the batteries back into the hold and I got to work prepping them for final assembly. Once returned one of the subs cameras stopped working and we’ve begun working on fixing that. Monday night we begun transit to a new location and just as I was ready so send my blog post the ship changed heading and blocked the satellite dish once again taking down the network. Tuesday, today I had finished prepping the batteries and we are planning to start assembly tomorrow. That just about sums up what I did for the last week.
I also want to say I was suppose to have some images in the last blog posting but didn’t due to a complication wile up loading so I’m going to try again tonight. If I cant get it to work I will post the images separately in an few days once we get back to port.
