Parts and Produce
Cameras roll as Ted Waitt boards, spare parts and fresh veggies arrive, and both vehicles are performing well…
THURSDAY, 03.19.09
1326: From Ted Waitt
Just wrapping up my U.S. business and planning to head over there shortly, say 10 a.m., and be there most of the day. Then eat dinner and I’m out. What time dinner, and does that work with rotation, etc? I was thinking early, like 6:30 - 7 p.m.
1330: Response To Ted Waitt
Right now we have a scheduled retrieval for 7 p.m. With the new parts, we may end up changing over the transducers and that’s gonna take some time. Andy Sherrell will have to look over the data, Greg Packard will have to change over the data and I should be here to make the call. As much as it pains me, we may have to bag it.
We are currently readying for a launch around 10 a.m., and it would be good if you can be here for that. I think they want footage of you talking during roll out. I’m double checking the time right now.
Not so easy! President Ted Waitt hops from his tender onto the Seward Johnson.
1522: Day 34 (March 20) TW Is Aboard RVSJ
Today’s schedule includes Ted Waitt conducting interviews during a launch, recovery and loss analysis, and with crew aboard the ship. He’ll likely finish up this evening and depart for Pago. We are hoping to have dinner, but it looks like the ops schedule may interfere. We have a vehicle coming up at 7 p.m. Andy needs to look at that data and Greg and I need to discuss transducer change-out then. As much as it pains me to say, we may have to skip dinner. We just finished launching Ginger with the cameras rolling, and the boss is looking good. Nice sunny day for it.
Ted Waitt tosses a salute to those aboard the Seward Johnson.
Vehicles have been doing well. Ginger’s long-range transducers are holding strong for the time being. Mary Ann is still working with the short-range transducers. Bad news today, the last pair of existing 75/410s, the same model we have been losing with regularity, were pressure tested yesterday at EdgeTech and failed. We are now hoping for at least one, perhaps two, of the 120/410’s to be delivered during the change-over in 10 days. They are going to test those in the next couple days. I would be lying if I said we were not afraid of failures. Ted just delivered one set of those transducers and we will test those in the school of hard knocks and the real world DEEP.
Crew morale is up due to the flats of tomatoes, lettuce and 20-dozen eggs delivered. Plan I’m hearing is that Ted will leave tonight and head back. Mary Ann is currently surveying 13a and Ginger just went in to survey 14b.