BOTH AUVs BACK IN SERVICE

WEDNESDAY, 03.04.09

0446: Update
The last couple days have gone well with many happenings. It’s a long story with a couple twists so follow along. When last we met, Ginger was still beached and Mary Ann was down on survey after an unexplained fix of the stator in her thruster motor. Mary Ann completed a full survey, partials of boxes 6b and 7b, and was recovered without issue at 0220 yesterday morning. She was turned around very quickly by the night crew and launched to survey 6a/b and 7a/b (to square off the boxes) at 0404. The evening then passed uneventfully. After the day shift came on at noon, they did some work placing Deep Ocean Transponders (DOTs) and surveying them in. DOTs went into the water 1524 and 1601. At 2000, a codend tow was performed and there were some interesting species included in the sampling. Of particular interest was a dragonfish, a six to eight inch eel-like fish with yet another face only a mother could love.

At around 2330, Ted’s ship showed up with our parts and a few other items. No small number of cigarettes was delivered for those addicts who had foolishly decided that they would use the opportunity of a remote job to quit, had then failed in this endeavor and ended up mooching off their fellow shipmates. The wannabe quitters and the moochees required re-supply, which was expedited for us on Oahu. As well, a 20-gallon aquarium was delivered to the photographers for work with the tow results.

The parts we had been waiting for were also delivered by Ted’s ship (kudos to them for their assistance), and the team immediately went to work installing them onto Ginger as we moved from March 2nd to the 3rd. This work was interrupted by a successful recovery of Mary Ann at 0434. She had again brought back good data and had squared off the remaining partial boxes. It was decided we would concentrate on getting Mary Ann back into the water as soon as possible, then return to re-commissioning Ginger with the new thruster installed into her tail assembly. Mary Ann had the new software diagnostic installed and was launched at 0726, after which work commenced again on Ginger so as to get her wet after a week languishing in her hut on the port stern.

Back on Track

Replacement parts arrive…

Unfortunately we did suffer a small error in programming Mary Ann that necessitated what we call a “user abort.” There was an issue with programming the coordinates of the new DOT field in the mission profile. She was recovered at 1147. When she came to the surface, she had no thruster power when commanded to back down after releasing her recovery float. The rest of the recovery went well, and the team again broke off the work on Ginger to take a quick look at Mary Ann’s thruster. When her thruster motor failed again, we decided to let her wait while we finished up the work on Ginger.

Ginger was also programmed with the diagnostic software, and one other fix was also applied. We wrapped one of her sidescan system electrical boards in material designed to shield its electromagnetic output. This EM shield looked like nothing more than a piece of tin foil applied to the board in question. This fix was suggested by Hydroid since they felt that the EM emissions from this board might be causing the aborts. This work was completed and Ginger was launched for the first time in over a week at 1405 to go survey the new box 24b.

The team immediately got to work on Mary Ann and found the stator that had acted up the other day had failed again; a broken encoder we coaxed back into working the other day had finally given it up. All agree we were exceptionally lucky to get a couple full missions from this part while Ted’s boat returned our spare (you might remember we had originally thought this part had to go toward building a replacement for the loan, but another was found on the beach for the build so ours could come back to us). The spare stator they returned to us was installed in Mary Ann and she was launched at 2154.

As a last bit of news, we received some new software and dongles for the analysis software and our gain issues have been dealt with on the analysis end of things. The data is looking smoking hot.

I know a lot of this gets confusing, so one pretty pertinent fact may have escaped your attention: as of this moment both vehicles are working away, so…

Witness the power of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL Battle Station!

Okay, got a little carried away there for a second, a Star Wars moment. But ya gotta admit it’s pretty damn cool to be back in the saddle. I would say morale on the ship is huge right now. We’re fully up and running and we are smack dab in the hot zone. I’ve heard many people commenting in the last few days — and I won’t say it myself, superstition is too big a force at sea — but emotions are running high right now, very positive.

I’ve included a copy of our daily progress report. It is my fervent hope over the next couple weeks you will see the numbers in these statistics rise dramatically.

I’d like to say something about the last week. We were definitely looking into the maw of some ugly times out here, but deep sea missions like this always have some kind of trouble. I just read the final report on an op that took place a couple years ago not too far from here that made our recent difficulties look like a walk in the park. I’m not making light of our travails. We were definitely in a hard place, but no one out here (or anywhere else) gave up. Everyone on the ship, along with those supporting us from shore, worked together toward a resolution. We also had very positive support from the top down — Ted Waitt never faltered, never took it out on the team and worked his magic along with everyone else to get us back up and running. It was extremely expensive and time-consuming, but we are back on it. I feel very good about our ability to run down our remaining technical issues and I like our chances for success.