Tuesday, May 29, 2007

we're loose, finally

hello there, greetings and salutations

i awoke from a dream, that i was in class and everyone was taking a test and
everyone got all the answers correct and the teacher started singing a bob
marley song and then asked 'what does the next line talk about? and wait until
the market is high: and everyone rose their hand, to the ship making a noise and
we were floating around heavily. when i went to sleep, we had been anchored at
high tension to our core that had been stuck in the sea floor for over 10 hours.
i knew one of several possible things had occurred. either we cut the line, the
line broke, or the core was free. i got dressed (lucky for my shipmates), put my
boots on (lucky for me) and went up to the fantail (the aft deck where the a
frame is and where we are deploying the cores from). i soon discovered it was
the latter. yippe. we really did nto want to loos all that equipment (nor get
anyone hurt).

so, b4 i went to sleep, we tried several attempts to get the core out. we pulled
in the cable to a high tension. we tried letting the cable out 5 meters, and
then pulling it in again, twice. eventually we pulled it in so much that when
one large wave came by, the tension went over 28,000 lbs. the elastic limit of
the cable is 24,375 lbs. the breaking limit is 32,500 lbs. we definitely
stretched this cable. it will be unusable and we'll have to cut it off and
dispose of it. the solution (we came up with, but implemented duign my slumber)
was to payout some wire, relocate the ship so to create an angle to the core
with the wire, and then increase the tension again. sans more details, this
finally worked (approx 27 hrs stuck in the mud). i cant wait to see what we get.

bfast time., hungrily and well slept, j

1 comment:

Sandy Patton said...

Holy smokes!
Glad it came loose and no one was hurt. Sleep is good! Can't believe how fast the time is going.
Watching from afar, love, MOM