Heading Home!

0400 07 September 2012
R/V Aquila
55 45.512 N
164 49.411 W

We made it! We are officially done with the last mooring turnaround, and are currently steaming full speed towards Dutch Harbor, Alaska. I believe in the last post I mentioned how nice the weather was and it would be a matter of hours until we were done and headed home. However, it was not to be. Later that day, we started seeing reports of a pair of monster lows racing toward us. As we watched the systems develop, it quickly became clear we would not have time to make it to our last site before the first gale hit. After numorous team meetings and a great many calls to offices in Seattle, we made the decision to divert to St. Paul Island to wait out the worst of it. St. Paul offers the only available protection in that area, but protection is certainly a relative thing. We pulled into the harbor on the 3rd and got secured with our winter lines, monster four inch tie up lines strong enough to lift a whole stack of battle tanks with one line. Normally four lines keeps the boat snug aga
inst the dock, but in preparation for the coming breeze we doubled that to eight lines. All that and the surge still managed to break one of our older lines! Though most would've prefered to be heading home out of Dutch at that point, we all enjoyed our stay on the island. St. Paul is the number one breeding site for northern fur seals, and a major destination for birders across the world. The crew at the Trident Seafoods plant was kind enough to get us a permit to enter the seal rookery, so we were able to head up and snap some pictures of the adorable seal pups. We departed under blue skies and calm winds the evening of the 5th, heading out for the 200 mile run to the mooring site. Upon arrival, we sent the CTD over for the last time, retrieved one short mooring, deployed two, then headed in for dinner. After a delicious pasta dinner it was all hands on deck once again to retrieve the monster surface bouy we had all been waiting for. Everything seems worse in the planning stages and
deck meetings, but once we cut it loose from the anchor it was nothing more than another bouy retrieval and we had it aboard in short order.

0453 2 September 2012
R/V Aquila
61 50.294 N
167 42.368 W

Good morning to all! The local time is way-too-early-30, and I am way-too-happy for how early it is. Not that 0500 is a terrible time to be up, but we only just wrapped up our last CTD station at 0145 this morning. The station couldn't have gone better, it was a balmy 36 degrees, the moon was out, and seas were only four feet. Speaking of that moon, it is occuring to me that this is the first time I've seen the moon at night in a very long time. I wonder if it has been there the whole trip and I haven't noticed it? More likely, this is the first time we have had enough vis to be able to see any moonlight on the water!
Everyone insists they aren't counting down the days until the end of the trip, but with only three days left I think we all have a little clock running down in the back of our heads. The boat has become our Homeward Bound train, and with the reappearance of the moon there just may be light at the end of the tunnel!

0400 31 August 2012
RV Aquila
66 36.576 N
168 18.670 W

Whipped to a frenzy by an arctic gale, the icy black waters of the Chukchi Sea have once again made a point to remind us how small and insignificant our steel bubble really is. The last 24 hours have seen sustained winds at 40kts with gusts over 50 and swells climbing to 22 feet. As dawn breaks over an angry sea, it seems the worst has passed and the winds have slacked off some. By an incredible stroke of luck, the wind came up just as we finished our last mooring station off Barrow and got underway to Nome. Continuing the lucky streak, our course lands the swells straight on the stern, the best possible direction for a smooth ride. While it has been relatively smooth, the ride has been anything but relaxing. As each swell hits the stern, it lifts the stern until the bow is pointing down at what seems like 20 degrees. Far enough down that when one looks straight ahead from the wheelhouse, the swell ahead of us is at or above eye level. Each swell pushes on the stern with the force of
an avalanche, giving us a full two knot increase in speed and forcing the autopilot and rudder to work overtime to keep the sea from pushing the stern to the side and putting us broadside to the next wave. As the swell rolls forward from the stern, it creates an effect much like a teeter-totter with a teeter that constantly rolls from end to end. When the peak of the wave is about 40 feet forward of the stern, the water drops out from beneath the screws leaving our twin 80-inch stainless propellers thrashing at a frothy mix of water and air. This cavitation is probably the most uncomfortable thing about the current sea state because it creates a vibration like an earthquake that is felt and heard throughout the entire vessel. With the screws part of the way out of the water, the engines jump in RPM, coming out of sync and adding more vibrations. Then the stern plunges back into the water and the endless cycle starts anew.


0900 1 September 2012
R/V Aquila
Port of Nome

How quickly things change up here. In the matter of a few hours, the winds can change by 40 or 50 knots and the seas can climb or drop by 15 feet or more. Yesterday morning we were watching swells towering over the bridge, by noon we had rounded Cape Prince of Whales and the swells had dropped to six foot rollers. We got secured to the pier in Nome by 2200 last night, and this morning we awoke tied to the pier, the calmest it has been in two weeks. We are just about to depart for Dutch Harbor and our last few mooring sites. As of right now, we are scheduled to be in Dutch by the 5th.
All have high hopes of finding more whales these last few days, though by now everyone is getting a little worn out. Onward and Upward!!

A quick explanation of the pictures in this update,
We stopped in Nome on the 15th of August to pick up supplies and pick up two additional members of the science crew. Due to an issue with the ILS at the airport, no flights came in but we had plenty of time to explore Nome and catch up on lost sleep. It was in Nome that we took the pictures of the musk
ox and reindeer. Yes, that is a real, live pet reindeer in the back of the truck. Mom and Dad talked to the owner and the reindeer is a complete pet, best buds with the guys dogs, and jumps in the back of the truck when he sees his owner getting ready to go. No kidding. Only in Alaska!!
The other pictures were taken in a large ice flow we found three days ago. Lots of ice, wallies, and even a polar bear!!! A POLAR BEAR! Pretty neat seeing one in the wild, that was a first for nearly half the team on board.

August 24th 2012

After hanging on for several days of ping pong ball fog, mist, rain, wind, sloppy seas and generally miserable and uninspiring weather, we finally got a break today. If you've been to Seattle or places like it,you understand how people can get a little freaky when a weather break comes. Everyone stops whatever they are doing and jumps on the opportunity to cut loose! First we broke out the rower and the treadmill from their captive lines and covers, cranked the music and turned over the mile meters. Next, several fun loving crazies on the crew took advantage of the glassy water to stamp 'CHUKCHI SEA' in their water sport passports. A discussion took place on the bridge about whether or not the following activities would be safe and after coming to the conclusion that there are no guarantees, the Aquila zip line was open for business...ran by the captain himself! Crane swing, crane boarding, swimming and paddleboarding were all on todays 'fun' menu. All manner of safety gear was donned, from pro surfing drysuits to orange gumby survival suits, and one by one they launched. First over the side with her paddleboard was chef Katie. Our surf board demonstration came from Tanner, the most familiar with boarding by crane. Several orange gumbies flew threw the air like flying squirrels from the upper deck splashing down in the Chuckchi with a perfect, once in a lifetime, IMAX widescreen sunset happening in the background.

One of our favorite quotes-by Donald Miller "Once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time." Many of Aquila's crew will go home with a good story from today...but one question, does this count as an overboard drill?

1920 12 August 2012
R/V Aquila
Bering Sea, Alaska

Evening of August 12th! It feels like at least a week has passed since we left Dutch Harbor, though it has only been four long days. The timing of our mooring turnarounds has left most of our crew on a somewhat erratic sleep schedule, only compounding the feeling that time has slowed to a crawl. We have changed out eight moorings now, four relatively short and easy, four anything but simple. Though we have the process nailed by now, each set poses its own set of complications and challenges. An acoustic mooring is about ten meters in length when it goes over the rail, making it the shortest, lightest, and most manageable mooring. The "long" oceanographic moorings are intended to sample the entire water coloumn, from sea floor to surface. Because of winter ice keels, the top of the mooring must end 18 meters below the surface, but that still leaves a good forty meters of delicate equipment that must be gingerly deployed over the side. The long moorings are deployed using multiple picks on the crane, sometimes as many as seven or eight. The first pick is the bottom of the strand, with a 2500 pound steel anchor at the bottom. This first pick is the most dangerous because of the nearly uncontrollable anchor at the bottom. Normally when we lift a heavy object at sea, the crane cable is kept as short as possible to minimize the swing. On a mooring however, each piece is ten meters long so we don't have much choice other than to time the launch with the roll of the boat and try to get the anchor in the water ASAP. With the anchor under water the swing slows considerably and we are able to bring the set back over to the rail and secure it with a chain and shackle. With the first strand secured to the rail, the crane hook is removed and we can get set up for the next piece. Once again a strand is held in the air above the rail while PMEL chief rigger Bill joins the two strands. Once joined, the set is lowered until the top is even with the rail and can be secured again. Finally the last strand is hung over the rail with a release hook. Last minute checks completed, the ok is given and the release is tripped, sending the entire set on an express freight ride to the muddy sea floor.
After a few close calls with heavy things starting to swing on the crane, it became apparent we needed to do something about our space situation on deck. While deploying moorings, there was room to work but nowhere to go if things went south like they often do when the weather picks up. Since our original pile of 45 anchors had shrunk quite a bit, we spent two hours carefully restacking the anchors and moving the whole pile aft by two feet. By then it was pushing 2300 and the sun was about to set so we decided to knock off and get an early start. Rising early at 0700, we shoveled down some breakfast and geared up to spend the next four hours on deck. Everything within 30 feet of our launch area was moved and reorganized, giving us close to 200 square feet of extra work space. While the boat is still stuffed to the brim, we were able to alleviate the immediate trip hazards and move the most expensive and sensitive equipment to safer spots on deck where it would be much harder for an out of control crane load to wreck them.
By 1100 we had the deck mostly squared away so we parked the crane and went to work securing things until the lunch bell was ringing in everyones bellies. After a delicious lunch of Havarti and Swiss grilled cheese sandos (on organic artesian sourdough bread) with a side of chicken and vegetable soup, we headed out for a quick mooring changeout. When we finished, CB gave us the news that it would be two days until our next deployment. Originally I had planned to spend some time working on our jetskis, but with the return of the rain I decided to focus on more practical and urgent matters, drying our wet boots. We had the material for the big pieces but no fittings to pretty it up so out came the duct tape. Half an hour later, with a large pile of PVC shavings on the deck and a shrunken roll of duct tape in hand, three sets of boots were well on their way to being dry by morning.
My last project for the evening is a set of adjustable pot racks for the stove so pots and pans can be left on the stove in rough weather with no fear of them jumping to the floor. Although I cut out all the pieces yesterday, it will take some time to get them fitted in and attached to the stove so i had to wait until all the cooking was done for the day. Now that I have the galley to myself, I had better get to it. Pictures will be forthcoming!

2100 August sixth.
Grand Aleutian Hotel
Dutch Harbor, Alaska

Arriving in Dutch Harbor this evening was an interesting experience for me. I left Seattle at 1300 and was on the ground in PADU by 2040. In Anchorage, I left the giant 737-900 behind and boarded a Saab 340, a small turboprop commuter. With a slight headwind and a full airplane, we had to make two fuel stops to get to PADU. The first was at King Salmon, the second Sand Point. Landing in King Salmon, your eyes are immediatly drawn to an ominous tan hangar with eight hangar doors across the front labeled 1 through 8. The Airport Facility Directory sums it all up with a small note, "Caution, air defense alert aircraft may scramble at any time." Sand Point offers slightly less entertainment, and is best known for a large population of drunks using the VHF emergency channel to settle family disputes and cuss out neighbors.
Not one to be left out, the PADU airport offers its share of excitement in the form of a road running directly across the approach end of the runway. When aircraft are on approach, a PenAir employee closes the gates across the road to prevent trucks and airplanes meeting at high speed. In 2009, something was lost in translation at the gates and a semi was allowed to drive through right as a plane was landing. Surprised at the last second, the pilot had no time to react and the semi caught and sheared the landing gear off of the Grumman Goose, scattering the rest of the aircraft across the runway. Although the classic amphibian was a complete loss, all onboard survived. Thankfully we had an uneventful landing, if maybe a bit rough. With the legendary Alaskan weather, pilots prefer to hammer their aircraft on to the first few feet of runway rather than risk a go-around in the mountains. Back in the day, they used to fly the 737-200 into Dutch, but after one landed so hard that fue
l was pouring out of cracks in the wings, they banned large jets and decided to stick to the fleet of turboprops.
After I got settled in the hotel, I walked to Safeway to grab some food. On the walk down, I was mildly surprised by a persistant thought that stayed with me for a half hour or so before I realized what I was thinking. "Welcome home buddy!" I kept walking, trying to persuade myself that one side of my brain was joking with the other and the feeling would soon pass. After all, I am Tanner, the guy who got his Airmans certificate at 17, is going to study aerospace engineering at a well known aviation school and always told people he would be working forty thousand feet above the planet. So why am I walking down a hardly paved Dutch Harbor road, thinking this is home? I have only been in Dutch four times, and it is probably the last Alaskan city I'd call home. But is it the location? Or rather my mission? I am here to meet up with my parents and the rest of the crew aboard the R/V Aquila. But what about Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Cessna 182E waiting for me in Seattle
, and the helicopter flight school waiting for me in Oregon? Perhaps the Aquila is not my destiny, but rather a means to an end, a springboard of sorts waiting to launch me to a career I haven't even considered yet.
I have lived an amazing 18 years and have experienced more in those 18 years than 95 percent of people twice my age. With the amazing opportunities my parents have given me, perhaps it is only fitting that I can't even imagine what my future may hold! As I reach the Safeway parking lot, I take a look around and realize that as screwed up as Dutch Harbor may be, the rugged Alaskan terrain holds a serene beauty found nowhere else.
Like the rest of Northwestern Alaska, they gave up on road maintanence long ago and the potholes in the parking lot reflect this. Many are deep enough to bring even a high clearance truck to its knees, let alone a mortal car. For some reason there aren't very many Priuses up here!
I awoke early the next morning and met up with some of the NOAA team to get a plan together and figure out when we would be meeting the boat. Communication with the boat was maddening, as I had only a useless cell phone, an aircraft band VHF, and my Ipad. After the hotel refused to let us call the boat with their marine VHF, I had to resort to email from my Ipad. With the slow internet connection at the hotel and only sattelite internet on the boat, the process was frustrating to say the least. We finally met up with the boat at 1300 ADT, and just like that my vacation came to a screeching halt. After the team got all their bags aboard, we went to work on the deck, unsecuring and rearranging most of the equipment on the aft deck. We knocked off by 2130 with most of the deck resecured, and the equipment arranged such that we would have enough work area to assemble and launch the instrumentation moorings.

0500 August 8th
R/V Aquila, Loading Pier at "The Spit"
Dutch Harbor, Alaska

"BEEP BEEP BEEP!" The jarring ring of my alarm snaps me back to conciousness and I awake with a start. Shaking off the last tentacles of a dream, I roll out of my bunk and head for the galley and the electric kettle waiting to heat water for my hot chocolate. Around me, the rest of the deck department stirs to life with a chorus of grunts and curses that remind me I how happy I am to have a young healthy body. I shake my head wishing I could've finished my dream and slept longer, but it is 0-five-hundred and we will be under way in just under an hour. First on the list is a last minute run through the boat collecting all garbage before we leave. While underway, we must burn or store all plastic garbage so it is vital we offload all garbage while we can. With the dumpster run finished, we crane Mom's KLR back aboard, followed by our gangway. Looking good for an oh-six departure, I toss the lines from the dock, do the Tarzan leap from dock to deck, and Dad edges us away from the pier.
By the time the science crew begins to stir, we are doing ten knots out the channel, headed for Akutan pass.
A few short hours later, we approach our first mooring site. The mooring system consists of an anchor, acoustic release, instrumentation package, and a steel float. The entire system is about 30 feet tall, extending from the seafloor to 30 feet above the floor. In the bearing sea, we are looking at water depths in the 70 meter range so that keeps the whole package well below any surface traffic. During transit, we are also looking for Northern Right Whales, of which there are less than 50 less in west coast waters. With so few whales left, the best way to find them is by listening to their calls under water, which can be heard hundreds of miles off. For this we utilize the Navy's AN/SSQ Type 53 Passive Sonobouy. The sonobouy is basically a super sensitive underwater microphone, with some fancy gadgetry that allows it to be assigned a specific depth to float at. There is also a radio link that sends the recordings from the hydrophone back to the ship along with information about
where the sound came from. We are deploying a sonobouy every fifteen miles, and more when we get close to the whales.

1100
R/V Aquila
Bering Sea, Alaska

Each day brings us a few degrees further North, and a few degrees colder each morning. This morning was 34 degrees (about 1 degree for those that use metric!). To think, it is the peak of SUMMER here! After our 1100 mooring replacement, we did a trial run of another cool toy we brought. Affectionately called "The Pooper-Scooper" by the Aquila crew, the scooper is a stainless steel sled six feet high and wide. A fine mesh net is run across the middle to trap its prey, the tiny krill the whales thrive on. So why is it called the pooper scooper? At some point in the loading process, someone explained to our crew that the sled was to be towed behind us when we found a whale, hopefully trapping pieces of whale poop that could then be analyzed to tell the sex (gender...) and health of said whale. Well we all bought it, hook, line, and erm, sled. Somewhere, someone is having a whale of a time knowing they had an entire professional merchant marine crew fooled! What the sled is REALLY used f
or is a slightly less disgusting topic, studying the whale food.
The last gadget we have yet to use is a CTD platform that tells all one could ever want to know about the chemistry of the water. The CTD is lowered over the side on the same winch as the scooper, only we will be stopped and holding position during deployment, as opposed to the towed scooper sled.
Thus far the trip has been quite smooth, with average seas in the six foot range. Between mooring sites we are just driving A to B, giving us plenty of time for daily maintanence and construction projects.

Our chef Darian catches a rockfish-minus-the-fish in Southeast Alaska

     "You're not supposed to use speed brakes on your descent if you can help it!" That thought echos in my mind as I sit feeling the 737 hum with vibration from the extended spoilers. It is the evening of Thursday, August 2nd, and we are turning final, descending through a cloudless sunset into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Since the past Friday, I have been in Virginia and the Capitol, catching up with some old friends and soaking up the rays. After wrapping up our first survey, we raced back to the shipyard in Seattle to play Rush Hour with 20 ft shipping containers on the main deck. Of the five containers aboard the Aquila, only two were able to stay in place. The others were scrambled and rearranged to provide a more efficient work flow on our Arctic deployment. Exactly a week has passed since I stood under our aft deck crane, sweat pouring off me and sizzling on the black steel deck. Laying alongside the staging pier at NOAA's Sandpoint facility, we loaded 45 subsea mooring systems, eight crates of AN/SSQ NAVY Sonobouys and about 3000 cubic feet of assorted scientific gear. Each mooring system consists of a 700 pound railroad wheel as an anchor, a long length of chain with numerous instrumentation packages along the chain, and finally a large yellow steel ball to hold the chain up off the seafloor. The morning I left, we loaded 8,200 gallons of JP-8 Jet fuel to supplement our 70,000 gallons of marine diesel. Why would we need a tank of jet fuel on a research vessel? Well one of our fuel tanks is a dedicated aircraft tank that has been cleaned, inspected, and approved to carry aviation fuel. Since our engines can burn jet fuel just as well as diesel, we would rather have extra jet fuel than risk being short on gas.
    We now skip forward to the 6th, I am leaving for Dutch Harbor in a few short hours. The last three days have been a blur, rounding up many odds and ends for the boat, the small details that were missed in the war zone of a shipyard. Extra paperwork, cleaning supplies for the espresso maker, an aircraft band VHF, power strips for each room, all will be brought up on my flight. With that, it is time for me to upload some pictures and sign off! Twelve hours from now I will be in Dutch!

Yellow balls for all!!

Full house?

We WILL find the Red October!!

While in Virginia, I rented a Diamond DA-20 and flew down Virginia Beach

My copilot Katrina says no more pictures!

Virginia Beach!

Okay fine one more picture...

Katrina's base, USCG MILFORD HAVEN

Washington DC!

Massive storm we flew past in Montana. T-Cells all the way up to 35,000 feet!

Valley fog on an early morning Seattle flight

Glacier Rodeo!

Best parents in the world, Captain Kale Garcia and Captain Angela Keeling. It used to be captain and first mate, but now mom holds a 1600 ton master license, same as dad!

Pictures!!

After several painful days of internet issues, I am finally able to upload some pictures!!