Hello all,
This week had a roller coaster of ups and downs with the greatest up being the recovery of the HABCAM but getting it to work properly was harder than expected. Unfortunately, we may have got it working, we didn’t end up using it again. Not enough time was allotted to make use of the HABCAM once all the issues were corrected. We continued with a few more dredge sites, but they were mostly ones that we either skipped due to a sand wave bottom, flips or hangs. Basically, we ran out of time for HABCAM and sites for dredging. With extreme issues, comes extreme learning as I have found out.
To bring it back, on Sunday of 6/9, we were finishing up some more dredges before steaming back to the location of the HABCAM. The divers were going to meet us there around 1300, do some sonar scanning to pinpoint the HABCAM location. My watch with Huxley had two dredges on the first watch and four on the second. These areas were added stations along the eastern side of Cape Cod. The contained many clams and mussels. The bags were very full and needed to be shoveled to dump the dredges. This made the dredge process take an extra forty-five minutes and covered the entire table before sorting. That morning, I was running into a wall. I just wanted to give up, but I came here to learn and perform tasks. My will power was tested, sleep deprived and all. I made it through until the next day, the important day of this week. The best part of the week after all we’ve been through.
Monday was the day that we recovered the HABCAM! The morning was mostly just steaming, Huxley and I made use of our time to do regular rounds around the boat again. When I woke up, the sorting table had been rigged to pull up the HABCAM with a manual winch winder so that when the rope was pulled up, we could use the tugger to get it on board. We arrived on site around 1100, but the divers didn’t until 1300. They took their time scouting out the area with their sonars for a few hours. Then the divers went in, tied of a line at thirty-seven meters with a float. We backed down on the float, hooked her and pulled her on to the tugger. The most stressful part was over, next came the pull up on the tugger. With Tim North’s (Chief Engineer) experience, it came up without a hiccup. Once on the dredge ramp, a few adjustments were made with the trawl winch and the tugger winch. Eventually, the HABCAM was brought on board. Then, we moved it to the deck near its normal location on the port side. We found out from the divers that we hung up on a massive rock, who would have though a rock? Next, a few quick checks to see if it powered on; to everyone’s enjoyment, it did in fact power on. Now a full diagnostic was needed to see if they could re-terminate to the fiber optic cable at sea. They would give themselves eight hours to try and fix it, then we would go back to Woods Hole for their better equipped shore support. This decision was made on my off time, but the decision was made to go back.
Tuesday was the day of traveling back; the AM watch was mostly just steaming. An easy watch after having basically a week of nonstop dredging. On my second watch, we arrived at Woods Hole around 1200. Most of the work done for this watch was tying off the boat at port. I helped Christian on shoreside by getting the boat tied off to the cleats on land. After tying off, the engineers and scientist from NOAA came aboard to diagnose issues with the HABCAM. It took until 1700 before they were confident that it would work again. The personnel that came aboard had left shortly afterwards with the termination to be done while steaming back to where we left off. It took until the next day before we one, at location and two, ready to deploy it again. Another up for us.
Wednesday was the day where we finally put the HABCAM back into the water. It wasn’t until 0300 where the termination was completed, and a load test was initiated at 5000 pounds just like the first time it was terminated. The termination passed without a problem; it took some time though due to one of the shackle nuts not screwing in. Afterwards came the painstaking process of reattaching the termination to the HABCAM. This was only an issue because the cotter pin was not going on very easily. Once everything was together, another test was performed, and it was good to deploy. Huxley, Andy and I deployed it without a problem around 0500, so it was soon for bed. For our second watch, I found myself gearing up for more dredging. What happened? The possibility that a fuse blew on the main can caused a failure in data acquisition and could only be fixed when at port. The decision was made to do a few last stations, seven, then head back for hopefully one day on Friday. Thursday would have been a day for fixing it, but the weather would have been poor so departing was delayed. The areas that we had to dredge were left over sites, which unfortunately were the locations of where we got many rocks. Huxley and I only made it through three dredges before our off watch. We did find many rocks and scallops though, which was a nice end to our dredges. They weren’t even too heavy either.
Thursday was an easy day for sure. The first watch was mostly just steaming back to Woods Hole to fix the HABCAM again. The weather was expected to be pretty poor so we wouldn’t have been able to leave again until Friday morning at the earliest if everything went well. It was determined that we would not be able to leave Friday so the scallop trip ended one day early. Huxley and I most relaxed for once after all the shoveling we’d been through. Finally arriving, Christian and I tied off the boat once more around 0500 on the shore side with Shaun and Huxley feeding us tag lines. A few shore side scientist came aboard around 0900 to get started on fixing the HABCAM. It was eventually fixed, but no one knew if we would be leaving again the next morning. The plan was to take it easy on all of us and get off the boat for a few hours. Around 1800, we, as in the crew and science team, made our way a few restaurants. I mingled with the different science members as per usual at this point. We all had fun as it would turn out to the last day for them to be aboard the ship.
On Friday morning just before breakfast, it was determined that we would not be setting sail with the HABCAM. I guess the science team figured it wouldn’t be worth going out for six hours of HABCAM. It would have been a twelve-hour round-trip steam and they only had the boat until Saturday morning. The arduous task of unloading the boat was the main concern from then on. Unloading the three dredges, HABCAM, getting both ramps unbolted and securing all the deck items was everything that needed to be done for the science team to be on their way. For the crew, we would leave to go back to Lewes, DE after dinner. We set sail shortly thereafter and a thirty-one hour steam was underfoot. Since there was no science team aboard, the four of us could be on the same watch to get the major cleaning done on Saturday. With that being said, we all went to bed for an early morning of cleaning.
Saturday, the day of cleaning! The key areas to clean are the dry-lab, vestibule, below deck state rooms, life jackets, the wet-lab fridges, and the tool room floor. Shaun and Huxley tackled the state rooms first, while Christian and I handled the dry-lab. The dry-lab was an easy clean it just took some time as the floor had tiny blue rubber mats with holes to allow dirt to get off shoes. This covered the entirety of the lab so we had to pull them up in sections, sweep and mop. Then there came the wiping of the benches which was a very easy task. The two of us then went to the fridges. The two fridges in the dry-lab contained scallop meat for continued science testing, but it left a very rank fish smell when opened. Therefore, a thorough cleaning was in order with a product called ‘Simple Green’. It took a couple times of cleaning for the smell to go mostly away. Shortly after we started cleaning the life vest. More Simple Green was used in this process and hung them up to dry. Shaun and Huxley were taking out the vestibule mats and cleaning the floor with, you guessed it, Simple Green. The last main task was the tool room. All four of us were working to clean it up. It seemed it hadn’t been cleaned in some time. All said and done, the boat was looking, Sharp. The rest of the steam for that day was mostly catching up on work or relaxing. We all could get some sleep finally and be up early to get the boat tied off in Lewes. A bittersweet end to the scallop survey, but I at least have one more week on the Sharp with a quick turn around for a quick two-day cruise with the Office of Naval Research.
This week has been full of ups and downs, laughs and pain. I never realized how much hard work could go in to protecting different species of economic value. I’m glad to have been a part of this even when major issues came up, that being the lost HABCAM. If anything could go wrong, it definitely did, but everyone was very professional about it and solutions were made. I hope to keep that adaptability with me as I progress myself.
Best,
-Sebastian D.