Wow! Working in Hawaii. I can't imagine a bigger oxymoron. Come to think of it, I can't imagine a bigger irony because while the boat will get to go between all of the main Seven Islands, I will only get to one of them from the land the rest of the time I will just be peering at them from about a half mile away wishing I was on one of those sandy beaches sipping a mai-tai. Oh well, it beats commuting to a desk job every day, that's for sure.
This Job is another cable route survey on the same boat that took me to Columbia. The crew on the boat and the surveyors are mostly the same, but the company is different. This job is done for a company that has much less strict guidelines on the amount of data that has to be gathered, so compared to the last job, this one is literally a walk in the park. The first quarter of the job will be surveying along the shore line so we can get a picture of the bottom and we won't get the side scan fish hung up on a reef or something. The Sonar operators will be enjoying a nice little Hawaiian vacation while that is going on. The second quarter of the job we will be towing the sonar over the surveyed area and I will be enjoying the cruise vacation. The only people that will have to work the whole time will be the navigators, which includes Donny, Sorry Donny, I really am.
The last half of the job will be working 12 hour shifts as usual.
Two more things that make this job way better than the last one; internet and coffee. I looked up clearwire service before I left and saw that two of the islands have it available and I could connect to it if I brought my modem, it was the best decision I ever made. It proves my theory that If I have fast internet all the time I would be content to sail the seas 3 to 4 times longer than I would without it. Something about being able to check my email and pay my bills online that makes me feel like I'm not far from home. As for coffee, I have to thank Karla for that one, she stocked me up with three pounds of Starbucks deliciousness and I have been keeping it hidden for those nights like tonight when I stay up and type on my laptop instead of getting much needed sleep. I used to think that coffee was coffee and the difference in quality was not worth the $12 a pound that Starbucks wants for it. Now I say Screw it! Life is way to short to drink Folgers. Besides who knows what's in those flavor crystals anyway.
Day 14- So no sooner had I thought that things were going smoothly than someone bursts into my room and declares "We've lost the fish." This statement of course, can mean many things like "we've lost data connection with the fish" or " we've lost control of the fish". But this time it meant exactly what it sounded like. The fish had been brought up too far and the tow cable snapped breaking the block and sending the weight to the bottom. The fish was being held down on the bottom by the depressor weight in roughly 170 feet of water. I honestly thought I was going to have to dive down to it but we decided to anchor and try to locate it in the morning. So, bright and early we loaded up the rescue boat and went out snorkeling for the fish which slightly buoyant and on a 90 foot cable. After swimming around for about 20 minutes, Ryan spotted the fish and we marked a target on our GPS. Now with the fish correctly located we could bring out a professional diver and he wouldn't have to waste his time trying to locate the fish, he could just dive straight down on it. We connected a line to the depressor weight and a line to the fish and began pulling them both into shallower water. After we were in water shallow enough so the fish could be seen at the surface we attempted to bring the clump weight on board but snapped the line in the process sending the weight to the bottom and the fish just below the surface again. Night was falling so we monitored the fish through the night and in the morning we called out the divers again who helped us connect a steel cable this time and finally after two days of trying recover the fish. To our surprise and amazement the stupid thing still worked so we attached it to the boat again and off we went, less than three hours after landing it on deck, it was back in the water surveying again. We were the luckiest guys on the planet because snapping a cable in the water that carries 375 volts usually fries components inside the sonar unit. But this time the survey gods shined upon us.
About 18 hours into resumed survey operations the door flew open to the survey shack and the sonar technician declared in a matter-of-fact voice that the A-Frame that holds up the block and cable had fallen off the back of the boat. We smiled and laughed at him knowing that if the A-Frame had actually fallen off, it would have made a loud noise that I'm sure we all would have heard. A loud creaking noise sobered up the mood quite quickly.
This time a hydraulic hose had burst, sending 200 degree hydraulic oil all over the back deck and sending the A-frame into the full "out" position. The hydraulic rams stopped it when it got to the "out" position but it fell out with such force that it pulled the deck off of it's welds and tore a hole about 8 inches long at the base of the A-frame. All we could do is laugh at the terrible misfortune we were having (Very funny pictures resulted). It was determined that professional welders were definitely needed and we would have to return to Honolulu to get repairs. Depending on your opinion this was terrible news or awesome news. A very large downer for those who wanted the job to get done on time and under budget (or in my case so I could go home). A little bit of a stroke of good luck for those who hadn't flogged their liver in a couple weeks and needed refreshments. I guess I was in both camps.
Like I've said before, I think God is a hydrographic surveyor because the boat pulled up and took a spot in Honolulu harbor directly in front of a bar....
God also has a sense of humor because we soon learned that before we were allowed to get off the boat we would have to move to the other side of the pier which was a very short distance from the bar if you could walk on water, but since we were mere mortals we had to walk all the way around the harbor (about 2 miles) to the other side of the security gate to get to the bar..... A huge pain in the ass considering how close we could have been, those of us flogging our livers were just glad that there was a bar at all.
30 hours, roughly 50 dollars, and a headache later, the repairs were complete and the crew was ready to set sail again.
Day-24
With literally 0.05 percent of the survey left to go we had an equipment malfuction and the depressor weight destroyed the second block and tore a second hole in the deck near the crane. With the help of the honduran's and their welding skills we engineered somthing that worked out of the two broken blocks. We counted the cable out by hand and ran the last three lines. It wasn't easy but now it's done. After a rough transit back to Maui we demobed the boat and enjoyed a little of the island before returning home.
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