July 23, 2006 Options

[Steve_Stevenoski]

We slowly moved through the ice all night. No more quite, the noise of ice banging against the hull would be background music for our work today.

Sundays are rest days for the crew. Breakfast is from 7:00 until 9:00. Stopped into the mess for tea at 8:59. The Captain was the last one for breakfast, and I sat with him as he ate to catch the morning news on CNN Armed Forces. The news was of the situation in Israel and Lebanon. The fighting had intensified since I had left for the cruise. It is easy to forget that that the world hasn't stopped turning even though we are up here doing science.

Sundays are also a time for religions services. Movies are played all day in the lounges and mess. I had a chance to catch bits of the first three Star Wars. All six Star Wars movies were show today.

Stopped in at watch. The multibeam data is a mess. The ice crashing against the ship makes it difficult for the system to find the seafloor. We will have a lot of work processing the data. Jay and Dale continued to get equipment ready to do seismic. They finished wiring some of the controller connections in the aft crane control room.

The ship's course is being directed by the ice. We had moved farther south than we had hoped, but we were heading out of the dense dirty icepack that had been slowing us down. A light rain started after noon. By 1:29, flight ops for the day had been cancelled.

Mark continues to work on the seismic equipment. Mark is responsible for making sure that the electronic equipment that collects and stores the seismic data works properly. There is plenty of jargon for the gear. Mark had talked with Paul that we would be using the Geo not the Oyo for collection. It made perfect sense to them, and that's the important thing.

At 3:00 Jay and Dale were training the UT students with the air gun gear. Today they were assembling the pneumatic hoses that connect the guns to the compressor lines. Two new hoses were assembled. This entailed fitting an outer compression knuckle over each end of the hose. That would be the easy part. With that fitting tightly anchored in a vise, an expansion fitting was screwed down through the knuckle into the hose. I watched Russell and Kevin do two of the fittings. On the last of the day, I was offered the chance. I need to spend some time in the weight room, or eat a few more doughnuts. Even with the leverage of a 16 in wrench, the friction of the fitting turning into the hose was huge. It was very difficult. Any time tools are involved, that is a time for male bonding. As each of us tugged and grunted, the others conversed and offered sincere and sarcastic words of encouragement.

Kevin Bain working on compressor hose couplings


Started watch at 4:00 in about 45 meters of water. This is very shallow and the multibeam doesn't produce the best data at these depths. Chirp data was good, but we were seeing multiple reflections. As a result of a couple of consults with Steve and Dale, Russell made adjustments to the Knudsen that cleaned up the multiples.

Early in the watch, MST Don, completed work on a circulating pump that had broken in the Bio lab. There is always something to keep track of. There are hundreds of things that can break of stop working for a variety of reasons. That is one of the main jobs of watch standing is to insure that equipment is up and running and to report any problems to the support staff.

At about 5:00 the ship slowed to a stop. We had gone on station, a stop to do some science sampling. Larry S had stopped the ship to collect sediments from a large chunk of very dirty ice that had come along the starboard side. Using a rope and a bucket from the deck, he was able to collect a large piece of the ice. He would let the ice melt freeing the trapped sediments and gravels for evaluation in a day or so.

OSU group and Coast Guard techs prepare deck for sediment corer


The remainder of the watch was uneventful. We had finally entered ice with open water. The ship was able to move easily. We would stay in this area for the night, to locate a large area of open water to do a test of the streamer and gun cage some time in the morning.