SUNDAY, 02.15.09

0955: From TW
Safely aboard ship and on our way to you.

0123: To TW
Nice! Mary Ann just began her journey to the bottom. Fair winds and following seas to you — and luck to us all.

THE SURVEY BEGINS

0126: DOTs Are Surveyed In
Mary Ann is on the way to the bottom for the first sortie. Full update this evening

Advantages of AUVs vs. Towed Sidescan Sonar

Sonar Analysis Team Lead Andy Sherrell on the AUV technology

MONDAY, 02.16.09

0804: Day 1 (Yesterday, February 15)
We got here at 2315 the night before last, and did a CTD (Connectivity, Temperature and Depth) cast to check sound velocities in the water to help us calibrate our Deep Ocean Transponder (DOT) field. That wrapped up around midnight thirty. We started laying DOTs in at 0100, dropped four DOTs, finishing that work at 0420. It took an additional five hours to survey the DOTs in and by 0930 we were ready to start survey.

Mary Ann went in at 1013 and took two and a half hours to reach the bottom, arriving at 1245. We were pretty concerned about a reading concerning her oil volume when she hit the bottom. The vehicles go in with 90 percent oil volume and are set to auto-abort if they get to 35 percent. For some reason she was fluctuating between 39 and 35 percent so for the first couple hours of her survey we were concerned that she was going to abort.

We decided not to launch Ginger until Mary Ann had completed at least one leg and made a turn. We wanted to make sure she was well on her way before launching the other vehicle; we would have to run over to the other box to launch Ginger and we didn’t want to be in the middle of doing that only to find out that Mary Ann had aborted and then have to run back over to the first box and retrieve.

It seemed that Mary Ann was pretty stable so we set up to launch Ginger. We headed over to the other launch site at 1530, arrived at 1620 and got Ginger in the water at 1710.

A Finely Choreographed Water Ballet

Launching Ginger from her cradle for an intended 23-hour run…

She took a bit longer than anticipated to get to the bottom and just about the time that she should have dropped her descent weight to level off and start the survey, we got a leak indicator and knew she was going to abort. That she did at 2020. She made it to the surface at 2152 and was recovered with no incident.

Greg Packard went over her logs and found that the leak had been detected in the tail section of the vehicle. As it was right about the time that she should have been kicking in her props, he thought it might have had something to do with the shaft seals or O-rings in the drive unit. They drained the oil from the unit, replaced the shaft seals and found that an O-ring in one of the quick disconnect fittings was damaged. This was the fitting on the hose that runs oil in from the oil compensation systems that help counter the pressure. That ring was also replaced and the unit was re-assembled, filled with oil, pressure tested, electronically tested and re-attached to the vehicle. They did a pretty quick turnaround given the circumstance, and had her back in the water at 3:45 p.m. She is on her way down now and looking good.

So, Mary Ann is still down and due to finish her mission in the next two hours or so, and will be on the surface in approximately three hours. We should see our first data from the survey between 8 and 9 a.m.

The seas are up a little bit, although the wind seems to be dropping. Weather is calling for seas to increase some over the next 72 hours, although it shouldn’t get anything near to the level where we can’t work (knock wood). One note on the CTD casts and ADCP data-they are seeing a cross current a couple hundred meters below the surface.

Surface currents are running at 1.5 knots on a bearing of 270 degrees. At 200 meters below that they are seeing a current running at a knot on a bearing of 90 degrees, basically perpendicular to the surface current. There’s a pretty serious thermocline at approximately 175 meters, as well as a pretty cold surface current. There seems to be a cooler than normal current running along the equator coming in from the east and bracketed north and south by warmer waters. Seems odd to me, but I have no further information on that.

Morale is pretty good. Although people are tired, everyone is just now getting synced up to their shift and many people have been working and watching the progress well outside of their shifts. I’m trying to be awake for all launches and recoveries, although that ain’t gonna last much longer. I’m going to shoot for all recoveries from here on out so I can be in the room the first time the data gets gone over.

I had been working on a more detailed report for potential blogging, but about an hour ago my brain turned to mush and so did that report. So, I am churning this one out and getting to bed. I want to be up in three hours when we look at Mary Ann’s data.

The film team is getting some good stuff. They did some work on one of the launches and then got up for the emergency recovery tonight. They also did an interview with Lee Frey, Andy Sherrell and me this afternoon on the search boxes.

Guess that’s about it for now. I should be back on this set in about three hours.

Ted Waitt Personal Log Entry: 02.16.09
We landed in Tarawa early this morning. Since we crossed the International Date Line, February 15th never existed for us. I was surprised to see a large number of Tarawa citizens lining the runway; I’m guessing they don’t get many jets. An interesting runway it is, too, extending the entire width of the island, from coast to coast. There’s really no way to get from one side of the island to the other without crossing over the runway, so cars, dogs, bikes, people and other hazards seem to freely use it as a thoroughfare.

The customs people were very friendly; I was told you could spot the head person as the one who is wearing shoes, but the guy boarding our plane apparently didn’t get the memo. He seemed mostly interested in whether we had any hamburger, as islanders apparently don’t get much else other than their primary diet of rice and fish. It took us about an hour to finally clear customs, and then we were free to load the chopper for a very hairy and potentially dangerous flight of 80 nautical miles over water.

Packed with four bodies, two dogs, full fuel and almost 1,000 pounds of food and supplies, the Bell 407 was just a few hundred pounds below its maximum capacity. Given that it’s a single engine chopper, and that Tarawa has no rescue capability, we made a few modifications to our standard operating procedures for the 50-minute flight over open water. First, Tom Sharp, our pilot, installed a piece of equipment on the dash (coincidentally made by a company from La Jolla, a few blocks from WID offices) to allow the boat to track our position via the Web. If we lost an engine, they would be our first line of rescue and it makes things easier if they know where we went down. Second, Tom had a back-up locator strapped to his leg and a marine band radio around his neck. Third, we all had on inflatable life vests, equipped with seat belt cutters and underwater breathing regulators. Even though the Bell is equipped with inflatable floats, it’s almost a near certainty that the chopper will flip in the event of a water landing. Tom explained how the chopper would be a safe island until rescue shows up in a few hours, but that you can’t inflate your life vests until you’re outside the chopper and the life raft inflates. Hence the need for seat belt cutters and breathing regulators while the chopper sits upside down in the ocean.

We finally got clearance to take off, and even with some miscommunication with the tower, we left for open water. We picked 80 nautical miles as a safe balance between less than half of the 240 nautical mile range of the 407 (with enough fuel to make it back). We also knew we’d be out of radio communication until we were within approximately 20 nautical miles of the boat, so we’d be totally without radio contact for about half the flight. The marine band radio might give us 30 nautical miles, but we weren’t sure.

Flying over the open water, I noted we were flying at precisely the same altitude, 1,000 feet, and almost exactly the same time, just after 8 a.m., as Amelia Earhart when she was looking for Howland Island. We discussed how difficult it was to see anything with that angle of light and even moderate cloud cover. Shadows looked like islands, sunspots looked like reefs and haze on the horizon obscured everything. It would have been nearly impossible to spot an island unless you were right on it, especially after you’d been flying for 20 plus hours at 10,000 feet in a noisy, unpressurized plane. And to make matters worse, navigator Fred Noonan may have had a hangover on top of it all, by some reports.

Anyway, we tried to contact our ship about 35 nautical miles out, and received no response — now we know how Amelia must have felt for a few scary minutes. About 25 nautical miles out, we got a fuzzy, staticy reply on the radio. I’ve never been so happy to hear our boat captain’s voice. Couldn’t understand a word he said, but couldn’t miss that accent. Shortly thereafter, we saw a tiny spec of a box on the horizon that stands out — you can tell it’s not supposed to be there. It’s the boat.

As we approach, the ship begins to take clear shape. The captain informs Tom the ship is moving six to seven knots, the wind is 17 knots and the boat is pitching about one degree in what appear to be eight to 10-foot seas. We circle once and Tom brings it down for a direct and decisive, expertly-firm landing. He was working hard to make it look easy, and the cyclic (the primary steering control) from the dual controls on my side hit my leg more than once, but the passengers in the back wouldn’t have known. He also landed far in front of our normal spot as tracking the chopper forward for passage wouldn’t be advisable in these seas. I don’t even want to know how much clearance between the rotors and the superstructure there was. The crew strapped the chopper down while the engines ran down, and we hopped off the chopper, safely aboard the boat. We then hunkered down for our 60-hour transit to rendezvous with the ops team aboard R/V Seward Johnson.