WEDNESDAY, 04.15.09

2043: Day 8 & 9 (April 14 & 15)
As the poet said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry…”

Our plan to retrieve Mary Ann, run over into the E column and finish the survey of deployed Deep Ocean Transponders (DOTs) in that grid, and then launch Mary Ann into E while Ginger topped off the A/B columns did not quite work out. We did get over to the E area to finish the survey, but the weather came up significantly. What was supposed to be a two-hour run turned into a three-and-a-half-hour run, and our transits between DOT survey locations, 12 in all, were slow. Roughly, we were in 30-knot winds and 10-foot seas at a minimum. It was a long, bumpy evening. The result being we did not have time to get Mary Ann into the E column before we had to run back over to the A/B area to retrieve Ginger, so she took the ride back over to A/B with us. I found this to be fairly confounding, but there was really nothing to be done about it. The weather does not heed my exhortations to “Stop!”

A breakdown on the times is as follows:

April 14 Cont’d.:
0515 DOT in 19A recovered
0710 Ginger back in water to finish A/B
1250 Mary Ann back on deck from her last A/B survey; sonar analysis of target re-acquisition
1400 Began transit to E
1730 Began E DOTs survey

April 15:
0030 Survey completed
0300 Ginger recovered from her final A/B survey
(At this point, we headed back over the E lanes and prepped Mary Ann for launch. We had a self-test failure on her sonar, necessitating a switch-out of vehicle to go in the water. Ginger was prepped and launched.)
0844 Ginger began survey of E lanes

Since then, we’ve been working to solve the problems with Mary Ann and she is still aboard. There appears to be a problem with her hard drive in the sonar bottle. I am also told the Windows® version in that computer is asking for the documentation number to re-verify the OS, and that we don’t have it on board (and do not want to gamble with the three-day trial on a vehicle about to go down 5,300 meters). E-mails have gone out to all the relevant EdgeTech personnel, but we’re not getting any responses due to the hour on the East Coast. I’m keeping my temper about this (why we don’t have the OS documentation I have NO IDEA!).

We’ve decided to head back down to the A/B lanes to recover three DOTs (we hoped to get both vehicles working in the E area before recovering these; see opening quote). This means we won’t get Mary Ann back into the water until early tomorrow morning. The reason for the delay is we need the analysts to fully clear the last of the A/B lanes before we remove these last three DOTs. We’ve taken a couple hits productivity-wise here, basically losing a day with Mary Ann due to run times and the sonar issue. The sonar issue would have certainly surfaced at some point, so the run time just delayed our discovery of it and made a difference. If we’d found out earlier, we might have received the info in time to launch her today.

Add to this the unhappy news that we are still getting our butts kicked by the weather almost as badly as we did during the transit, which is pretty unexpected. As of this moment we have Ginger in E and Mary Ann aboard, and we have about eight hours of work to do in the A/B boxes and transits to recover three DOTs. That should put us back in the E area not long after midnight. Shortly thereafter, we hope to get what we need from the EdgeTech boys to get Mary Ann back up and running. Ginger is due back up around 7 a.m. tomorrow.

To give you an idea of how hard it’s been operating in these seas, I attached a file showing the track of the ship (green) and Ginger’s movement (black) during her recovery last night. We had to take three shots before we finally got her trailing behind the ship (shown where the two lines converge). It was rainy and the seas were simply ugly. The back deck was still wearing a light sheen of hydraulic oil from the still leaking fitting that was broken the other day. It was a treacherous night and the crew, headed up by Don Liberatore, did an excellent job under difficult conditions.

Hopefully, everyone got their taxes done and didn’t get a bad cup of tea along the way. I hope the Republic holds until we make it back! More tomorrow!

2146: Update To The Update: Day 8 & 9 (April 14 & 15)
We’ve found a hard drive onboard that is working. Andy Sherrell pulled one of his personal drives to check the system and it’s working. We are currently testing that on the bench and it’s looking good. We have altered our course to the northern-most DOT for recovery so we can get back to the launch point as quickly as possible if it all works out. We are running into some resistance from the new drivers with regard to speed. We are in some weather, but I just went out to the back deck and found us to be in following seas, (indeed, the seas waves are actually PASSING us) with a very comfortable ride. I just had a chat with one of the boat drivers who joined us in Samoa, and he is resisting bringing us up from seven-and-a-half to nine or 10 knots (why? I honestly don’t know). Greg Packard says this was apparently an issue last night during the DOT recoveries while I slept. I plan to discuss this with Don and the captain this evening and have made quite clear to the current pilot that a half hour matters to us operationally almost every time. Bottom line, if we can increase our speed and the vehicle self-tests go OK, we hope to get Mary Ann back in the water sometime around 10 a.m.