August 9, 2006 Options

[Steve_Stevenoski]

August 9, 2006

Mother nature served up a crazy buffet of weather for us. Out on the deck it was cold, 15 mph wind from the north. We had occasional periods of now that felt more like pellets than flakes. It was a miserable day to be on deck.

Sunny Morning


The cores had been working throughout the nigh. At 8:00 they were lowering the piston corer 2200 meters down to the seafloor. The core was short, only a meter or so. This is due to a very had region of old sediments that have been compress. All in all, it wasn't the core that they were hoping for, but they cataloged everything so that it was ready for their analysis when the cruise is completed.

At 10:00 Larry Lawver notified everyone that we would like to start doing seismic work at about 11:20. We had the compressors running, everyone involved in the deployment was contacted, and the bridge was notified that we would like to have a safety brief at 10:45.

At 1:00 we were warned that we were heading into some heavy ice. After a few minutes the ship came to a stop. The kept the rpm'f up in the props so the cage would not sink and cause the guns to get damaged. W got the cage on deck. The bridge started to back and ram to free us from the ice. While we were breaking loose from the ice we made some minor repairs to the gun hoses.

We were back underway by 2:00 and firing guns shortly after. At 6:00 the cage was on deck for a check of a check up. We repaired the air leaks and were back in the after by 7:00

Healy from Helicopter


For most of the day we were using five air guns. We would prefer that we have six or seven, but we keep having problems with the pressure hose connectors leaking. 11:00 we made another check of the cage and guns. The air hose leaks were easy to repair, but during this check we found that the number 4 gun had a damaged solenoid. This repair would have to wait until we reached the end of the seismic line.

I talked to the engineers and they though that the air hose connectors were breaking because they had been over tightened. We just lightly tightened the connectors, wrapped the connectors in bulldog tape and then lowered the cage.

We were able to fire 6 guns consistently when the connectors were torque to the correct specs to prevent over stretching the connectors.

All of us tried to sneak a short nap in every few hours. We were planning on keeping the guns operating for another 10 to 12 hours. There would be no time for a good night's sleep. Now that we are in a 24 hour work cycle, you wee new faces popping in and out of the science labs as people come onto their shits at all hours of the day and night.