Hello,
I am writing my final blog post now that I am at home and comfortable. My time with the Hugh R. Sharp was enlightening. The number of skills and lessons I learned seemed endless.
Summary of Final Stint
During my final leg of this internship, we had to delay a cruise to August due to issues with the coolant systems, hydraulics, and the Caley level wind not functioning properly. This gave us a short amount of time to prepare a fully functional ship for the upcoming Naval Academy cruise. During the mobilization day for the Naval Academy, there was uneasy chatter and an urgent rush to be able to set sail. Slowly, as the mob day went on, problem after problem was solved.
While the problems with the ship were being solved by the engineers, I was with the Marine Techs. Our job was to fabricate the ADCP and EK80 mount onto the pod system that Sharp uses for acoustic sounders.


Additionally, the techs had to manage and maintain the ship’s CTD, computers, and systems. The last responsibility of Marine techs was to assist the scientists with their equipment setup and be the middleman between the technology and their research goals.
Part of the challenge with being a marine tech and a crew member on a ship is that you constantly have to adapt to what is currently working on the vessel. We had to do this many times at the port and on the sea. This includes alternate CTD rosette mounting designs, adding winches, using backup computers, and much more.
One of the biggest adjustments I had to make at sea was manually controlling the CTD winch, since the sensor on the Caley level wind was broken. Additionally, I had to take an active role in communicating with a walkie-talkie between Science and the Boat driver to get clearance for equipment deployment.

I even had to go below deck near the engine room to communicate numbers on a screen during ROV operations, due to the display not transmitting. It was later found out that the Ethernet cord for the display was not properly plugged in.
I learned a a lot more during this cruise. My learning highlight was definitely communication skills, through successes and failures.
Conclusion
I would like to thank the amazing crew of the Sharp for making me feel at home and treating me as a crew member. Every day was more fun because of the crew. I would like to give a special thanks to my direct mentor, Christian Kernisan, who had the systems to solve everything and taught me many soft skills along with hard skills to increase my efficiency. I would like to thank my other main mentor, Alex Dominguez, who was always there when I needed, for whatever I needed. Lastly, I would like to directly thank Tim Deering, our Marine Tech supervisor (ex-tech himself), for his wise tidbits and help during some of the more chaotic days.