12/5
We began the week with three days left until the INSURV inspection, and everyone was running in high gear! In the morning I added the final coats of paint to the bullseye on the platform and Emily and I started working on fixing the gaskets for the CTD platform track. The track goes over several deck plates and hatches, and the gasket eventually gets displaced as the ship rocks. Putting it back into place just meant undoing the bolts holding the track, and (professionally) shoving the gasket back under. This also gave us an opportunity to work on the track itself, grinding down any corrosion and aligning the track pieces better. This, along with the motor rebuild Emily did last week means the CTD cart has never moved smoother!
As rain came in for the afternoon, I shadowed Sonia as she updated any out of date workstations, which can be a delicate process for some machines that operate a specific version of Windows or Ubuntu. This is not a quick project so we busied ourselves with other minor projects for the rest of the afternoon while also babysitting the computers.
The weekend had a slight glum, after the cold weather and only short trips around town my car was dead! We went to the front desk of the Smith Laboratories to borrow a work truck to jumper it and the security guard there said “I’ll do you one better” Thanks!
12/6
The rain continued into Tuesday so we all continued inside projects, most of which included continuing computer updates and cleaning, yay! I worked off and on between checking for security updates on computers to cleaning down in the transducer room. The transducer room is vast so some deckies were cleaning down there also. They painted and dusted while I cleaned off all the tops of the transducers and transducer equipment, and also scraped off tons of excess masking tape on pipes.
The big success of the day was removing the tape from the CTD platform, finally revealing my masterpiece, the bullseye!
This process was challenging for me technically to combine all my skills recreating the pieces and fitting them together, and then artistically painting the bullseye in Rustoleum so that it could be seen from the winch operator’s booth (since that’s who this is for, so the winch operators have something to aim for). Overall I think it came out great, and it gives everyone a laugh when they walk by!
We finished the day at the tech’s weekly meeting in person, where everyone wished us luck on the upcoming inspection.
12/7
Final day before INSURV! The morning started with meetings for the SSSGs and then frantically finishing up all projects. For me this included a final round of cleaning in the labs and staring hard at all the SSSG spaces, trying to find things that had been missed. The crew worked so hard preparing for this inspection, the ship is looking spotless!
I fine tuned my little bolt cover for the CTD, as the last one was too small by about 0.5 mm. This proved an exercise in frustration as the 3D printer decided for half my prints to stick, and half of them to unstick part way through. The machine cant be blamed for this (as much as I’d like to) and it just keeps printing as if nothing happened, leaving you with a wonderful ball of filament spaghetti in the end. Eventually I printed enough good ones to attach.
12/8
Everyone woke early for even more last-minute preparations, but before we knew it, we had almost twenty Navy guys onboard setting up in the mainlab. In the briefing before we set out from the dock the Navy commander gave us a run down of which departments would work with which inspectors. They also explained that this team solely does inspections, moving around the country doing all the Navy ships. The techs were assigned one inspector who specialized in IT and the process began!
We departed the dock at the 1030 slack tide, with plans to steam down into Vineyard sound for the propulsion tests. The INSURV inspector followed us around as Emily and Sonia explained how the network is set up onboard and answered his questions about the servers and router(s). It was very interesting to hear him compare the Armstrong to other Navy ships, we must seem tiny! The Navy guys were especially impressed with the food, complementing the stewards endlessly. The tech inspection finished quickly after he checked out all the server racks and printers, then we were free to lay low until our next test.
After lunch the techs gathered back for a CTD cast, which was quite short because we were only in about 25 meters of water. The goal was just to demonstrate the operation of the LARS arm that deployed the CTD, and this was also a test for the termination I did, luckily the CTD operated well and my termination held! (losing the CTD in front of the Navy might have been the subject of my nightmares)
This concluded the inspection for the techs, and we got to relax a bit while the deck crew did more operations on the way back for slack tide at 1545. After buttoning everything up for the night, it was time to get some rest for the last part of the inspection tomorrow!
12/9
The INSURV team was back bright and early, continuing with the rest of the engineering checks at the dock. The techs hung out for any questions that might come up, but the only ones were helping the team connect to the wifi. The team then left before lunch without much fanfare, but during the crew debrief we were told just how well we scored and then the celebrations began. Overall the Navy sounded very impressed with the ship and especially the crew!
I spent the afternoon fixing the only thing the tech department got dinged on, which was missing screws from the server racks, and easy fix. I then moved onto investigating an ethernet cable that had stopped transmitting, apart from the crusty corrosion on the termination, another bad sign was when I cut the cable and water started dripping out. Sonia helped me to find a replacement cable to run and I re-terminated the end to fit where it needed to. While we aren’t sure how the water got in the cable, the sun was setting and I lost the light to finish the project.
Weekend plans no longer include a short cruise, as the wave conditions were forecasted to be rough. This just means we have a more relaxed window to set back up after INSURV. Another disappointing note is we wont be installing the new ADCP transducer this week either. While we had the transducer itself onboard, the parts for the elevator needed to lower it through the sea chest are not ready yet, so the project has been tentatively moved to February. I am disappointed of course, this install promised to be a great learning experience involving multiple departments onboard, working together to install a transducer without taking the ship to dry-dock. However I know Emily has other projects we can dive into this coming week!
This by no means leaves us bereft of projects for this last week! INSURV gave us an opportunity to purge and clean, and this has unearthed several projects to keep me nice and occupied.