RVSJ PROPELLER HITS AND DAMAGES GINGER

MONDAY, 02.23.09

0117: To Ted Waitt, You Still Up?
We have a live angler fish from the trawl net, crazy weird and still twitching. Also, we had a ‘failure to deploy’ of the float on the vehicle and there was contact with the vessel and damage to the tail assembly. They’re still triaging and it’s bad news. I’m thinking we could use the film team ASAP while the fish is still alive and while the team works in the van.

0118: To Ian Kellett
Dude, we have a live angler fish (crazy cool) from the tow and the vehicle was struck by the ship during retrieval. I’m thinking you guys should be here.

0121: From Ted Waitt, Re: You Still Up?
You want me to get them going?

0122: RE: You Still Up?
Yes. We’re turning your direction. I’d haul over to us and get them here. I can have our boat do the pick-up when you’re close. About the only good news from today is gonna be footage of this fish and the repair, which seems okay (unless Amelia is in the data). You might come with them if you want, a high drama hour here.

0128: RE: You Still Up?
We’re headed there.

0130: RE: You Still Up?
Roger, we just went power up and we’re gonna close, too. We’ll put our boat in the water to come get the film crew once we’re next to each other and have stopped moving.

They’re still looking at the damage to the tail assembly, but no matter what they eventually figure out, you should know it ain’t gonna be good.

0303: To Ted Waitt, Update
Good news, fishy woke up when they stirred him up with chopsticks. They’re all back there oohing and ahhing, getting good film. Photographers are glad they came.

Net Trawl Survivor

An interesting specimen on an otherwise difficult day

Bad news is pretty bad. Here is the short, dirty version of what happened. The float failed to deploy; this happens rarely and when it does, we usually get alongside it and rap it with a pole to get it to shake loose. It happens toward the rear of the boat and not stopping that practice is a failure of mine and Lee Frey’s, respectively. We should have been doing this from day one amidships, that is clear now.

They got the float clear and a line on, and there was some separation from the boat. Then the distance closed. I haven’t got to the bottom of this, but the Woods Hole guys are saying it was a problem with the way the ship was configured, one engine and wrong prop. Captain Gunther is saying he doesn’t understand how it got under there, he was following directions. It is cover you’re a** time to some degree. We’ll analyze it, but it happened fast and most of the crew doesn’t understand what happened. Recriminations can come later, but we are already working new procedures to prevent it from happening again.

Ginger is damaged…

I am meeting for the report on damage soon, but it looks like the tail section is a wash — busted prop, bent shaft and cracked housing, I think. We have the components but not the outer housing, and some parts we need we don’t have anyway, that much I know. Going to get the lowdown on this, but apparently that part was decided against on the spares list. It sounds like we might be looking at the Askari Protocol: a run to Tarawa or Samoa to pick up a part. I’m almost certain they are going to tell me we are down to one vehicle until they replace this part. I will have a formal report sometime during the night but that’s what I’m hearing now.

0325: To Ted Waitt, We Have A Vehicle Down
Ginger was sucked under the boat last night and suffered severe, irreparable damage to her tail section. Details to follow, but immediate action is to start looking for a way to get a part out to us. I am almost certain the only way to do this is to get a part to Honolulu and flown to Tarawa on the G5. Other options are to Samoa (+three days). I know we have talked about this and we can try to charter a boat to run it out, but given that we have another ship out here the cost is crazy (although I’m sure you won’t like being sent on an errand while you are so closely involved out here now). I will get on the phone to my contacts in Samoa to see if there is something along those lines or a different boat, but I truly think the fastest thing is what we did in ‘06. We need to start working on other options.

Possibilities? We could charter a flight for an airdrop, but I do not think this is an option since you’d need a C-130 or the like from Honolulu to kick it out the door in a raft. The Coast Guard and Navy have this capability, but generally will not do it for private citizens. Maybe we can start digging around in Honolulu and see if anyone out there will do this or if they know a company that will. We don’t even know about the part travel time (or availability), but we will tomorrow. We probably have two days before we need a plan in place to receive it. I have a guy who can be in Honolulu to receive and track stuff down with some notice.

As to this spare, I believe it was one we decided against. We can’t buy everything and I hope there are not a lot of recriminations about this. You cannot plan for everything. If we’d cracked the syntactic shed, we’d be done for three months.

We’re going to keep working one, take a look at the box and see how to re-prioritize our work to get the maximum benefit while we move along. I think we should concentrate on high priority areas. Sorry there’s not more here, I am still taking in information.

0443: To Ted Waitt, RE: We Have A Vehicle Down
Lee is going to report on this a bit later. We do not have the spare thruster assembly. I have not looked at the spares list to track it down, but I know at one time I saw it on one of the spares lists and recall talking about one in Florida. I’m not sure if it got nixed because the lead time was so long (six months), or whether we decided against it because we had all the internals to replace it already, in addition to the cost and lead time (this sounds familiar to me). The damage was to the housing itself. There are reports coming my way regarding the extent of the damage, but the housing the shaft runs through was hit by the ship’s propeller. There is not another one of these units on the shelf.

We have queries into a couple of places. We’d basically be borrowing their unit. Then we’d need to get it out here. I am checking into a ship to run it to us from Pago. The other option is for us to have a new housing turned up. We’re not going to get the titanium, but we could have it turned out of stainless. I think we can have this done in Pago if they have the stock. We could have one turned at Hydroid, too. If they can make one in Samoa, that would cut down on the travel time significantly.

The internals on the unit are likely irreparably damaged, although the motor may still be okay. We have all the replacement parts here. We don’t need this unit to be made of titanium as it is an oil-compensated housing that doesn’t need to take the pressure. I think this is a possible fix. A replacement assembly is preferable as we wouldn’t have to totally rebuild the thing, but we’re looking at all options.

After he responds to my e-mail, I will speak to the shipyard in Samoa about turning one and to see if they can arrange a ship to get one here. Other things we are working on include ensuring the floats release from here on out, a plan for working amidships and a plan to knock a failed float release out of its slot instead of running aft down the rail. It’s all a band-aid compared to what has happened, but now we’re working on one machine so we have to be even more careful to make sure the boat is working with thrusters only when recovering. If the need to use a screw arises, they use the port screw only (as we recover on the starboard side).

If we can get one of these things delivered, it might be worth having someone hand-carry it from the states or Honolulu (cheaper). We cannot afford a part sitting in the customs house for three days like our last shipment.

Mary Ann is working outbound leg 7 (out of 8), looking okay. Still planning on filming in the morning.

0544: Day 8, (Yesterday, February 22)
Last night during recovery of Ginger, she went under the vessel and was struck by the ship’s propeller. There is non-repairable damage to the thruster housing that is not spared aboard the vessel. At this time, we are working toward solutions, but it seems nearly certain that Ginger is out of commission for five days to a week, minimum.

Mary Ann is working her mission with no difficulties and is planned to be recovered at 6 a.m. and re-launched at 10 a.m. with a film op. Nothing else follows at this time.

0357: From Dominique Rissolo RE: We Have A Vehicle Down
By the time a spare thruster assembly was suggested to us (and it was not suggested earlier due to both the unlikely event of a failure and the extreme cost of manufacture), delivery would have been well past P8 time frame. I will assist with any inquiries if necessary.

0659: To Dominique Rissolo RE: We Have A Vehicle Down
Yeah, that’s what I thought. It was decided there was no point ordering one when it wouldn’t show up in time and we had most everything to re-build one. Needless to say, there will now be some significant spare items we need to address soon, as well as ordering at least one of these units to replace the one we receive. Mike Purcell is coordinating the request. We’ll get working on spares after we re-launch Mary Ann this morning.

0619: Update
We have located a thruster. The request is going up the chain of command at the appropriate company right now. We should know more soon. There may be a slight compatibility issue with our split tail foam and their thruster, but the mounting frame is identical. Still tracking all additional paths.

1100: To Dominique Rissolo & Ted Waitt
Excellent. We’re still working on it. Mike Purcell is still following up with the loan as well as integration issues. Mary Ann is just now in her hut. We will advise you on the quality of her data momentarily. She should re-launch in about three hours.

The film guys still want to do a snorkel. Your and Joe Lepore’s call, but it ain’t very nice on the surface. If we’re gonna do it, they need to get back over there first to gear up because their stuff is over there.

One last bit of news — the heat exchanger on the HPU unit is blowing oil. The ship’s engineer looked at it and recommended we cap off the salt water cooling hoses and simply stop running that cooling unit. Says we can run it for 15 minutes at a time easy and watch temp, and that it should be no problem. He says he doesn’t cool their A frame HPU (hydraulic power unit) at all, runs it for two and a half hours at a time and that it’ll take the oil in our reservoir a long time to heat up. We are proceeding with this and we also have a spare for the heat exchanger. Chief says the cooling plate is probably bad, too. Not sure about that spare, but it sounds like we have a work-around and we can always plumb into ship’s hydraulics. I have told them to remove those lines and cap them so we stop hemorrhaging oil into the ocean. Negligible problem.

When it rains it pours. More soon.

1118: From Ted Waitt
Are we working another option to have a thruster fabricated in case this one falls through? Don’t know why anyone would give us theirs… it’s not the cost of the vehicle, it’s the lost time.

1120: Response To Ted Waitt
I totally agree. We shouldn’t have been working it back there and that propeller should have been disengaged. No way for us to tell on that, but I know it was the plan not to work with it on. Supposed to be thrusters only. We’ve been having some issues with keeping the ship working as we request, running all three gennies and having full capability on thrusters. Lee took that to the staff at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute today, but we were at fault, too.

As to fabricating the whole unit, we are looking at fixes: turning up the housing both here and in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, but it takes four days just to lathe that housing. As I mentioned, we have the parts to re-build it, minus the housing, onboard ship. We are very likely going to have the housings turned no matter what so that we have another one.

1125: From Ted Waitt
What are the odds on getting a replacement? If they are greater than 50%, I will depart for Pago Pago immediately. Advise ASAP.

1126: To Ted Waitt
Roger. Greg Packard is on the phone now. No matter what, we need to get the film crew’s gear off the other ship.

1131: From Ted Waitt
We’re headed that way now. We’ll drop tender and pick them up. We’ll probably do Tarawa as it’s three days less round trip than Pago Pago.

1143: To Ted Waitt
All over again, I know. I’m pushing Greg as hard as I can to get an answer. Mike Purcell is still working to convince the higher ups. One reason they would do it is because then they’d have the same favor in their pocket from us.

The request is going up the chain of command and Purcell is also working on assurances and plans to get one made up for them. It will in all likelihood require us sending some of our spares to them when we turn around in March. They are going to use an existing piece of stock to turn up the housing to get one built on an expedited path. They are doing everything they can to make it happen, but we have to let their chain of command work.

We’re also working our spares list so that we can get as much stuff involved moving in the right direction back to us. Packard is going to call as soon as he knows something. I doubt we’d have clear word for you to leave before the next couple hours are up.

Ted Waitt Personal Log Entry
Déjà vu. Given Ginger’s demise and run in with the propeller, I’m currently headed to beautiful downtown Tarawa for a part. Just like 2006. Hopefully, we can borrow a part. If not, it’s gonna be seven days to make a new one. If we are successful, the part will be waiting for us when we get to Tarawa. If not, I’ll be hanging in Tarawa for a few days and probably won’t be able to make it back out to the site. Tarawa isn’t the nicest place to be marooned, so hoping we can strike a deal.

We picked Tarawa over Pago Pago as five days round trip to Tarawa vs. eight days round trip to Pago Pago (even though Pago Pago is a nicer place with better infrastructure). Best case, Pago Pago saves us three days of survey time, worst case a day and a half. Mission comes first, and this will put us severely behind schedule either way.

Mary Ann will hopefully continue plugging away, and assuming they don’t run her over with the boat, too, they’ll get one box/day done while I’m gone. Everyone on the boat was pretty down given the turn of events, and it overshadowed the angler fish they pulled up in the net, which was the most prehistoric-looking thing I’ve ever seen. Basically a mouth with fins and a bioluminescent lure hanging over its mouth. It obviously evolved as an eating machine.

Seas picked up a bit. Went over to Seward Johnson earlier to inspect the damage to Ginger and meet with the team to discuss options. We considered an air drop, but we knew it would be cost- prohibitive. The only solution is for me to go get the part myself. An air drop quote was $300,000 to $400,000. Are they nuts? They claimed to have just delivered candy bars to some guy paddling a plastic canoe across the Pacific. He musta wanted one pretty badly.

Smooth trip there as it’s a trailing sea, but we’ll likely pay for it on the way back. Wait. Just heard we need to take a part back with us. Turning around.