| P-MAN XIV Update #17 - Mixed bag: snorkeling, surgery, searching, sonar, soil sampling, and space-odyssey 02 April 2012 continued Being deployed in paradise is not easy. Warm to hot temps all the time. High humidity. Operational tempo. Rapid water loss. We can see all of these things taking their toll on our ROV team. And us. We're all a little tired. The ROV team headed to the dock to add an extra length of cable/tether to the ROV. That will give them a larger radius to search once they're on the bottom. What they estimated would take an hour and a half to two hours, took four. They were being meticulous, which is good. But it did take longer than they anticipated. When we finally got going, we decided that the first thing should be a lunch break. We drove the boat over to a small rock island that has an Avenger crash site with debris on the land, and in the water. The airplane hit the island, broke apart, some of it stayed on the island but the motor and a large part of the fuselage and wings ended up upside-down in the water. It's actually a popular snorkel and dive spot. The crew were all killed. One was found on land a long time ago, but the other two are probably still in the airplane in the water.
We snorkeled a bit on the airplane, then the kids and Derek paddled over to a cove 100 yards away. Lots of pretty fish in the enclosed area. Flip stayed behind and took some photos of the engine and fuselage in the water. Over the past few years, someone has been chipping the coral away to expose the engine. Although it is a better dive site, we do not condone any destruction of the coral. The photos are a way to track the changes to the wreck over time.
After lunch, it was a short boat ride to our target site. We're still trying to find a piece of the B-24 and this area is about 125 feet deep. You could tell the ROV team was a little tired still, but they launched the vehicle with a minimum of distractions.
And down it went. Until someone asked, "Did you turn the GoPro camera on?" Up it came. Said camera was turned on. And down it went again. Until someone asked, "Are the lights on?" The decision was that the lights were not necessary, so the vehicle was sent to the bottom. And there it stayed. It took a bit for Wes to figure out that he was losing control of the vehicle. Once he did, he ordered it pulled up. By the time the vehicle was brought to the surface, all it would do is run full on the thrusters, or not at all. It seems that when they lengthened the cable/tether, the main electrical connector on the rear of the housing became the weak link and developed a leak. On the surface, the leak wasn't apparent. But when it went to depth with the added pressure, the connector failed. Water got into the control area and that's that. After the bot was back on the boat, BentProp went to the bow to discuss stuff while the ROV team took apart the vehicle to see what was going on and if it could be repaired at sea. We were discussing the same thing at the bow when Wes came to us and said they needed to scrub the rest of the day. It could only be repaired on dry land. A good decision by the team. So we closed up shop and motored back to base.
On the way home, Joe pointed out good spearfishing places to Wes since Wes has purchased a 10 foot long spear, for fishing. Tomorrow, we'll see if Joe's lessons have taken hold with Wes. In the meantime, here are some face shots of some of the players for the boat day:
A very sad story: the pilot and two Koror policemen were out on official business. It was supposed to be a 2-hour flight starting at 3 p.m. At 8 p.m. the pilot radioed in that they were out of gas, couldn't see lights and were doing an emergency water landing. Everything else is rumor. That's all we know so far. It's now been 48 hours since they went down. Just a reminder that this is a serious place with serious hazards, even for the pros.
Where was Dan while this was all going on? He stayed ashore to perform surgery on our side-scan sonar unit. With directions from Marine Sonic, Dan was able to resurrect the control box and we are happy to report the patient is alive and well and ready to report for duty. When we go out, we'll head over to the east side to look for a Corsair that an eyewitness saw being shot down during the war. We did an extensive debrief on the boat with the ROV team, hoping that the lessons learned would give them success on their last two days of searching. As BentProp was enjoying the sunset, Wes came to our table to say they are pulling the plug on tomorrow's ROV work so that they can work out all of their problems with the bot, and build it back to tip top shape without anyone looking over their shoulders and looking at their watches, trying to go to sea that day. What a great decision. So, instead of being on the water tomorrow, BentProp will be in the jungle. Taking more soil samples. So far this year, every Monday we've tried to eat at Palm Bay Bistro. Best steaks on the island. And we remember every time as we arrive at their door that they're closed on Mondays. So off we went in search of food. And that was pretty much our day. 03 April Up early. No one owned up to being assigned to make breakfast or lunch. Dan quickly rallied and made us breakfast and Flip made lunch. Actually, Flip made a lunch decision: Bem Ermii for burgers. We joined up with Joe and went up to Aimeliik to take soil samples from a Marine Corsair crash site. Twenty samples taken there. Down to The Bridge Bem Ermii to pick up burgers and sat by the water to enjoy them. We saw a turtle swim by and a Napoleon Fish swim the other way. A small rain shower came through to keep us cooled down. Then up to Airai State near the airport to take samples from a Navy Wildcat crash site. It's amazing how much this area has grown up. The swamp used to be very sparse of vegetation. Now there are areas that are easily 10 feet tall. We found a way around the really tall stuff and unlike in the past where we sank up to our knees in water and mud, only the soles of our boots got wet. We took 16 samples from the Wildcat area, called it a day and went home.
We were supposed to watch the ROV team make a presentation at Sam's, but that has been moved to the 4th. So we met them at Krämer's for all-you-can-eat-spaghetti night. A good time was had by all. Tomorrow morning we'll have an 0730 brief, push off at 0900 and are definitely going to find something of interest with Dingar. - Flip Colmer |
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