June 23/24
Lots of boat cleaning. Vacuumed, scrubbed, and organized. Max and I worked on making cardboard mockups of equipment that will go in one of the lab vans for another trip. Packing tape is the worst I rescued a terrapin that somehow got itself over the seawall was stranded in the hot parking lot.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rU32dKLAh8U/U7G6eleNyXI/AAAAAAAAJeg/Xet_6Tv5s94/s1200/_MG_0126.jpg A terrapin.
June 25
Still waiting for the replacement control board, it should be on it’s way from Italy. Since we know the motor itself works and we won’t have to re-open the deck, we finally mounted the ramp and sorting table for the scallop dredge.
June 26/27/28/29
We found out that the part actually never shipped from Italy and it would be another few days. There was even a rumor that the part made it to America but was accidentally shipped back. It finally got here but it was stuck at the shipping place in PA over the weekend. So close but so far. Thats a few more lost days.
A new plan has finally come together to get the trip going on this boat. Sounds like it’s not getting canceled. The scallop trip is critically important because NOAA can’t set regulations without good population data. Fishermen are very opposed to regulation based on old or extrapolated data, and rightfully so. Somehow NOAA and/or NSF made a deal with the next cruise (or just bumped them) and added about 11 days to this trip. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay on for those. If we ever get off this dock.
Max and I got to go for a short ride on UDEL’s brand new R/V Joanne Daiber, a 46’ boat built for coastal research and ROV work. It’s very nice and had a bunch of ROV’s onboard. It was great to actually get on the water for a little while.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-btTUVuhdQEo/U7G6kNFZU8I/AAAAAAAAJe8/baFG5r2mtiI/s800/_MG_1392.jpg Finally offshore, temporarily.
I organized some shelves of wires and wrote up instructions for the next person who has to clean out the followthrough system.
June 29
Woke up to lots of alarms going of on the bridge. Turns out we temporarily lost shore power and the equipment freaked out. The chief mate got everything back in order. Later we had a little problem with the air conditioning but got it fixed pretty fast.
The motor part should get here today and hopefully we’ll be out to sea tonight or tomorrow.
June 30
The part got here! The engineers installed it but had some problems with the software. If everything works out we’ll be able to do our sea trial tonight. The situation seems to be getting better. The scientists are on their way back from woods hole. I really hope they don’t get turned around again- for their sake and everyone else’s. The engineers are working hard and things are looking good for a sea trial tonight.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Ky14OyRPBwM/U7G6k5GkgVI/AAAAAAAAJfU/X3L2JGuD_lE/s1200/_MG_3870.jpg Better than Christmas.
Something went wrong on the CTD crane and the cable got kinked. Ted, Max, and I had to re-terminate it. I cut apart the old seals and made a diagram of the wire connections. Re-terminating involves cutting the end off the cable, resplicing the wires, reattaching the cable to the connector, and resetting the connections in a waterproof potting compound. To mechanically attach the cable, the end is bunched into a “birdsnest” which is placed in side the metal connection fitting. A chunk of soft metal with a very low melting point is heated and poured in around the cable. When it cools it creates an extremely strong connection. I took some pictures of the process for the procedure manual.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v3nnp2ON_74/U7HWI0aUbMI/AAAAAAAAJhs/ECSsgA41svM/s800/_MG_3930.jpg Casting the cable end