Hello all,
Well we are still here in Honolulu waiting for repairs to be completed. We had to cut short our last cruise because the ship was having rudder issues so we turned around and came home. It was an especially big bummer for the scientists because they had a crazy schedule filled with all sorts of things they were still hoping to get done and they had to abandon the plans:/ It sounds like everyone was able to get some amount of their own samples so no one walked away without SOMETHING but no one got everything they were hoping for either. Like I said…bummer. Unfortunately these sorts of things happen on ships. You plan and plan and plan and everything is scheduled so carefully and then some random factor rears its ugly head and spoils the whole thing. But alas…things are being worked on now.
There was some major nail biting for a few days over whether or not we would be able to have everything fixed in time for our next big cruise but things seem to be going well. To repair the rudder they needed to take the top off which would allow the bottom to move around and potentially get out of alignment (this is a relatively large oversimplification of the situation but I’m just trying to give you some context here). One option for preventing that would be to dry dock. That would get the vessel out of the water so that everything could be stabilized completely before any work was done. Since we were looking for a much faster turnaround time the next option was to send down divers. They went down and secured the rudder from the outside by doing some pretty cool underwater welding. They were out here for a couple of days so I can’t imagine it was an easy fix but it seemed to do the trick. Once everything was stabilized they were able to take apart the rudder and make the repairs it needed. All said it seems like it has been a really big job and I SOOO wanted to watch the action but the guys have been working deep down in the ship and I know there is very little room so I would have been in the way but that would have been really fun to see!
We were originally scheduled to leave on Tuesday for this long cruise and obviously missed that but the hope is Friday (tomorrow). Still no final word yet but that seems to be the most recent gossip. I really hope things pan out that way because this is supposed to be a 44 day long cruise and all of the scientists are here and the ship is loaded and everything. Fingers crossed!
I will have more updates later today or tomorrow and expect a few more posts over the next day or two as I fully commit to trying to upload pictures. Honest they are coming:)
Until next time,
Elizabeth