It has been a few days since I updated the blog. It has been a busy week and I am physically exhausted. I have been putting in overtime the past three days with yesterday being the shortest OT of two and a half hours. I got up early this morning (October 30, 2009) to go for a run. I have not done that in a week as work schedule and fatigue made it hard to get up early.
One full week to go, then next weekend will be tearing down components to ship to the vendor for annual calibrations and preventive maintenance. The ship is due to sail to American Samoa in mid-January so there is not much of a window for the vendors. I hope there are spares lying around to cover for those components that may not make it back in time.
Honolulu has been very hazy. I ask what causes it and talk is volcanic activity on the big island. The same thing happened several years ago when you could not see too well out of the windows at Honolulu International.
I rode the Ka’imimoana on Wednesday for a day cruise south of Oahu. It was to test the winch that drops the CTD, Condensation, Temperature, and Density Sensors with water bottles, into the ocean for data acquisitioning and collect water samples. We were at sea for over twelve hours. My task was to ensure the displays worked when doing CTDs as well as “insurance policy” if any of the electronics went wrong. I did receive a nice letter from their CO in reference to me being there. I knew her when she was an Ensign. We sailed together on the Rainier to Alaska in 2002. Here is a copy of her e-mail.
“All -
I would like to thank you for your continued ET Support.
ET J joined us for a semi long day of work Wednesday October 28th, and jumped in right where we all knew he would. Thanks to J we had a successful day of CTD testing and hopefully the findings by the contractor and input given to the ship will keep us CTD'ing all the way on our upcoming cruise.
Thanks again.”
The sailing community within NOAA is very small and today’s junior officer may be your commanding officer in the not too far future. My commanding officer on the Hi’ialakai was the port captain when I reported to the Ka’imimoana in San Diego in 2003. Rule of thumb in the NOAA sailing community, do not burn any bridges. You get to know the career people you do not sail with just through casual conversations in Seattle, Alaska or Hawaii. I have yet to sail on the Sette, but nearly everyone on that ship knows me from the cross decking days from the Cromwell to the Sette. I have been on the Sette to help them solve problems in the past.
Today is another day of PMs and maintenance. I am going to look for a route for phone lines to the engineering spaces. I will admit laying cables is not one of my favorite chores in this job. But it also does not require brain power except to pay attention to detail and make sure you do not make a run under pipes or where it may be tangles. It did not turn out that way as I spent most of the day helping the ET on the Sette and then working with the IT person in getting our shore Internet links working.
I was in the process of making a ship’s intro web site for next week’s educational outreach. After reviewing the schedule, the kids and teachers will have no time to look or use it. I noticed while producing the site we lacked photos and videos of the crew doing their work. The objective of the educational outreach is science and to get youngsters interested in it so I do not think photos and videos of working stiffs is what the heirachy had in mind. However, I still put together good looking pages of undersea adventure but had to make it brief.
I will get this posted as I missed three days. I do not want to leave an impression that I forgot about this blog. I did not as I am busy and finally managed to squeeze in a few minutes to write during breaks and off time.
Our educational outreach cruise starts Monday and we are sailing to different islands. That should be fun but again, I will only see it from the ship.
Aloha from Hawaii and will return in a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment