Week 4 -the beginning of the engineering cruse-

The adventure continues… Yes week four has come and gone with me still a little behind schedule and this time it’s my fault. The time spent from my last post to this one has been buzzy. Last Thursday we finished prepping the batteries as the last step before needing to swap them out on the sub. It’s a good thing we got the batteries done when we did because it became all hands on deck for an early recovery on Friday. After an average start to the day the sub detected a ground somewhere in the main hydrologic system. This ground forced the pilot to shut down both manipulators and affectively canceling the rest of the dive. We were able to get the sub on the deck by noon and thus the work to fix the problem started. The work continued on into the night only to find there was never a problem in the hydrologic system but in the ground detector itself. To top it all off we ended up blowing a serge protector in the port power bottle and had to get inside to flip the switch. With Friday spilling over into Saturday and only a couple of hours of rest we got the sub in the water on schedule for science’s twenty first, and last dive of their cruse. Most of us then nocked off early and proceeded to get some much-needed reset. Saturday afternoon quickly came around and the cleaning started. We needed to have everything cleaned and ready for post cruse once we got into port and there was not one second to lose. By Sunday morning we were back into port in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Most of our day was spent cleaning and getting the sub ready for the up and coming engineering cruse but we still had a chance to say Good By to the science group. Monday was our first day off and it was not wasted. Looking for something to do so I jumped in with a group that was heading to go and see the Cloud Forest in Montverde. I had a grate time but I didn’t take the change in elevation as well as I hoped and struggled with some of the paths. We got back a little later then we had expected and I was out as soon as I hit my bunk. Tuesday was back to work. We got our new crew for the engineering cruse and they had a new list of objectives to work on with the sub. This cruse has most of the top personal who work on Alvin as they are needing different systems checked and requirements met so we can take the sub to its maximum depth here in a couple of days. We ended up working most of the day and most people went to hit the sack early… I was one of them. I had completely forgotten to do my blog hence the Wednesday post. Today wasn’t so bad. We had our first engineering dive and got down to 1400 meters we are planning on going to a site tomorrow that starts at 1100 meters but bottoms out at 1800 meters. Shortly after we set sail for Panama and have plans for several more dives in the Caribbean. We also picked up some navy VIPs who will be accompanying us on these dives.

O one more thing because there is a significantly smaller amount of people on board I have been able to get photos to work now. So here is some to get started.