Jason vs the Volcano

[From Will's wife:]

Here's a link to podcast interview from Will's  days as Chief Pilot of Jason in the Deep Submergence Lab at WHOI, circa 2006, where he talks more about that undersea erupting volcano:
 
link to YouTube video

my favorite part is ~3:06 where you hear someone in the background yelling 'Hey... Wow!.... Holy Moly!.. look at that red!'... that's about as excited I've ever heard a Geologist get! Good stuff.

Here's a more in-depth article:
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/jason-versus-the-volcano

The Beginning

When I was seventeen years old I joined the Navy. I had just graduated from the Boston Public School system and knew that to do anything in the world I'd need to know how to do something. I had bagged groceries part time after school and knew that was no career.  So off I went to boot camp. I turned eighteen there in Orlando. I stuck around in the navy for almost eight years. They sent me to electrical school and taught me everything I know about tubes and transistors. An obsolete education to fit the obsolete equipment I worked on. I was in the reserve Navy. I was active duty, though we took care of the reserves on the weekends. But I'd had enough. This was the first full time job I'd ever had and now I was 25 years old. If I reenlisted it would be for four more years. I would not be able to get out of the Navy until I had 12 years in and who does that? Twenty and you get a pension. So I left thinking I could always get back in. As it turned out I never looked back.

I grew up in Boston but shortly after I enlisted my mother sold the house and moved to Falmouth with my twin brother and sister and my grandmother so after leaving the Navy in San Diego I moved into my mother's basement for what I hoped would be a short stay. Like every other guy who gets out of the service I went straight to the unemployment office. While in the Navy I had heard all the stories of not only state unemployment but federal extension that gave an ex-serviceman 52 weeks of checks. I wanted a piece of that action. So bright and early that first Monday morning home I went straight down there only to find out that my president, Ronald Reagan had passed a law only a week ago that said basically that not reenlisting meant that I had quit my job so was not eligible for any benefits. I felt betrayed. Little did I know that this was just the start of how veterans benefits would begin to erode. Today I think it is at a criminal level.

So what to do? I painted a couple of houses and did just about anything legal for cash. I still had no clue of what to do with my life. I never was what I thought of as college material. I did well enough in high school but the thought of becoming a poor student didn't appeal very much.

I just finished eight year vow of poverty and now I wanted money, cash, a good paying job. Although the unemployment office wouldn't give me money they did pass along job tips. One such tip was for a job as an electronics tech at WHOI. I submitted my resume and a week later I got a call for an interview.

So here was my situation, I'm a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy. For the last eight years the only dress up clothes I owned were my Navy uniforms. I hate to admit this but I showed up for that interview wearing a brown polyester machine washable suit from Sears. I went to the third floor of the Smith Building in Woods Hole as instructed and asked for Barrie Walden who would interview me. Barrie was wearing cut off blue jeans and T-shirt from the White Horse Tavern in Bermuda. "Nice suit." he says. "Ok, I'll leave the tie and jacket here", I think, as he sends me down to the dock where the Lulu is tied up to ask for Ralph Hollis, Alvin's chief pilot. At this point I was wondering what I was getting into. I had never heard of Alvin and why did I have to go to this ship?

When I got to the dock I discovered that these folks used the word 'ship' in a very liberal way. The Lulu was not so much a ship as someone's lifelong welding project.

Anyway, I walked up the gang way and asked for Ralph. As I waited while a crewman went in search of him I was captivated by the centerpiece on the deck, the submersible, Alvin. Holy shit! Is this what this job is about? I never imagined this!

Ralph decided to do the interview inside Alvin's sphere. I guess he was asking all these interview questions but I really don't remember. I was awestruck just by being there. It was as though Captain Nemo had brought me onto the Nautilus.

After thirty minutes or so Ralph said they would call me by that evening as there were seven candidates for the job. I collected my machine washable jacket and went home not knowing what to think.

That was a long afternoon. I had the interview in the late morning and was antsy all day. They finally called at 6:30 that evening and offered me the job at $16k/year. I accepted and was told to be at

personnel by 7AM as the ship was sailing at 1000. Wow! That night I was trying to pack... for what? I don't know.. it was an exciting time. That was in 1981.

Woods Hole reserves the right to fire you without prejudice up to 6 months. When I got to 6 months and a day, I asked Ralph what was my big qualifier at the interview. He said, "You were in the Navy for almost eight years. I know you can handle a high level of bullshit for a long period of time"... a valuable skill in this job.

The Beer Machine

In 1987 all the UNOLS ships went dry. What that means is before that date you could buy and legally consume an unlimited amount of beer, booze, or wine aboard one of these ships. I know because I did and I had lots of help. You bought your beer from the ship's steward anytime and the Captain had “slop chest” open once a trip. This was for crew only and usually took place on the day after we left port and we were clear of U.S. taxes.

This was the early eighties and we would get a case of Bud for 6 bucks. A bottle of Appleton’s rum from the Captain was 4 dollars. Cigarettes were equally as cheap. Maybe 8 bucks a carton. None of this goes on any more, not even the cigarettes. They want us all to be healthy, happy sailors. Now a days some drinking still goes on but it is very much in the closet. You could loose you job over it.

On the Atlantis II one deck above the main lab was the beer machine. It was a regular 6-hole coke machine but had three soda and three beer selections. The steward was always trying to save money and one place he cut corners was beer. Not being a beer drinker himself he saw nothing wrong with stocking the machine with the likes of “Red, White and Blue” or “Dixie”; real bilge wash. That was OK for the masses but Jon and I were beer snobs. Life was too short to drink that crap.

While in San Diego, my old stomping grounds, I rented a Chevy Chevette for 19 dollars a day. This thing was tiny. No one wanted to ride in the back seat. It could hold one adult. Jon and I took it to the Liquor Warehouse, A cavernous place in Imperial Beach with a world class selection of beer. We managed to load 30 cases of bottled beer in this little car. (No canned beer for us!) All the way back to the ship Jon had two cases on his lap. We felt every little bump as the suspension system on this little car was flattened right out.

The rooms on the ship are small. Two men live in about 200 square feet or less and it definitely is less when you put 15 cases of beer in there. We managed though. That stash lasted all summer. It came in handy while hunting the elusive grad student.

One great beer machine moment happened during the Titanic trip. After we settled in there were daily transfers from ship to ship. Lots of sailors wanted to come over and check out the AII but no one wanted to go over to the Navy ship. I mean, what for? After the sub went down the first boat load came over for a tour. There were about 25 enlisted men with one chief. We started to give the standard tour. As we moved forward in the ship I said “this is the main lab and up there is the beer machine”. “The what!!?” That was all they needed. I got the steward to sell them some quarters and the tour stopped there.

It took those Navy boys about an hour to empty that machine of beer. It was good timing because their chief came around to collect them for the ride back. There would be another boat load in 30 minutes. This was just enough time for the steward to reload the machine with beer. It was still early afternoon.

The next boat out was full to the brim with sailors. We gave them the standard schpiel, “this is the main lab”. “Yeah, yeah, where’s the beer machine?” they asked. I told them I would get the steward to sell them some coins. “We brought our own” I was told. Obviously the tour was ending here. As if on queue one of our more enterprising Alvin pilots started selling the boys mixed drinks with that rum I was talking about. A buck a pop. Alas after 2 hours of this these intrepid sailors had to head back to their own ship. Some were having trouble with simple navigation. The next group that came out brought along a Senior Chief who positioned himself at parade rest in front of the beer machine. That was the end of that party!

The Batteries

One job I knew I would never miss after leaving the Alvin group was servicing the batteries. Every 3 to 4 months the batteries would have to be removed, disassembled, rewatered, reassembled and reinstalled. The whole evolution would take about 5 days and was done during a port stop which meant that the electrician (me) would not get any time off during that stay in port. Today it’s much different. There is a spare battery tank that is changed on a rotating basis so that there is always one being serviced and the sub suffers less down-time. Now a days there are no five day port stops.
Also, on board the Atlantis they have a hydraulic lift to raise and lower the 1800 lb. tank from its resting place in Alvin’s belly. This lift has an air hockey table like surface so that the tank can be slid around with ease for alignment. This was not the case on Lulu. To change a battery tank on the Twin Tubes of Terror you had to wear a life jacket while you climbed around under the sub on the cradle frame just 8 ft. above the water. One slip and you were going swimming. A lifting rig with two chain falls had to be assembled piece by piece under the sub to lower and raise the tanks from their bay. This was a precarious place to be working as you had to hang on with one hand to stop from falling in.
Alvin always tied up at the same place at the WHOI dock and I imagined there was a big mound of wrenches and ratchets resting on the bottom under there. After getting the lifting rig into place we would raise it up with a 5 foot spacer the same footprint as the tank on the rig. The plan here is to lower the tank till the rig bottomed out then hang the tank from chains, remove the spacer and raise the lifting rig to the bottom of the tank, lift and remove the chains, then lower the tank the rest of the way. It’s obvious this can only be done in port on a calm day. There would be one man on each chain fall, fore and aft with a spotter on the side telling them when to lower and keep the tank level. If it didn’t come down strait it might bind and get stuck. Once the tank came ½ way down the chain fall men could not see each other and were too close to the tank to check its level. This is where the life jacket came in handy. Standing there on a 4” steel I beam, the only thing between you and falling in the water was a good grip on that chain. Once the battery tank was lowered all the way it was moved to the port side out from under the sub and lifted on deck by the ships crane. The ships crane on the Lulu was like most of it’s equipment, a very Spartan affair. It was no more than a boom with a hand cranked winch and lifting the batteries to the deck was its primary use.

In the Lulu days there were three battery tanks. One was 30 volts DC for controls and the other two were 60 volts DC for propulsion and lights. All three tanks had the same kind of batteries, just configured differently. They were 6-volt golf cart batteries made by Exide. These were common and bought off the shelf. They were assembled in racks that stacked on top of each other inside the tanks and the tanks were filled with mineral oil. Taking them out and placing them on deck was a messy affair as they would drip oil for days. We set them down on sheets of homasote to absorb the oil. It is very important not to spill any oil over the side, especially in port, or the Coast Guard will be paying a visit with a hefty fine.

Once laid out on deck, I would then use a small vacuum pump to suck the oil out of each cell. When the batteries were used the electrolyte or acid level would go down over a 3 month period and the oil would take its place. It was very important to remove only the oil and none of the acid. The cells would then be refilled with distilled water and recharged over night.

Bright and early the next morning I would secure the charges and hook all the batteries up to a large resistor bank to discharge them at the 30 amp rate. At 30 amps this would simulate the batteries working moderately hard. Every 15 minutes I would take a voltage reading on each and every battery for the next 6 to 7 hours looking for weak ones. There would always be at least a half dozen. At the end of the day I would change out the bad batteries for new ones and put them all on charge again over night. This process would be repeated three times till all the weak cells were eliminated. After the 3^rd discharge the tanks were reassembled and readied for installation the next day.

Putting the batteries in was a lot slower than taking them out. Hauling on that chain fall to lift the 1800 lb. tanks into place was an aerobic workout. Also the alignment of the tanks was critical so the last few inches always went painfully slowly. This was a long day under the sub but it had to be done as we were sailing the next day.

Working with all that acid would cost me a set of clothes every time I did it. We were never reimbursed for that. But I guess it didn’t matter, working with all the oils that we did day in and day out most of us were dressed in what looked like rags every day anyway. During my first experience with the batteries I wore a pair of green coveralls that I had from my navy days. They looked fine after we got the tanks back in the sub but after I did my laundry it looked as though I had been standing next to several sticks of dynamite when they went off. They were shredded to the point that they were not even suitable as rags. No, I don’t miss those batteries one bit.

Styrofoam

Everybody wants a souvenir of their big adventure with Alvin. It’s still a big thing. Alvin is up to over 4000 dives and a little dirty arithmetic tells me that about 8000 people have seen the bottom through those view ports. Still a small number and definitely a life long memorable experience. Souvenirs rarely come from the bottom. I have a small rock collection but by and large anything that comes off the bottom is a scientific sample and is highly prized.

The single most popular souvenir is the Styrofoam cup. A regular sized coffee cup will have all of the air squeezed out of it by the tremendous pressure of the oceans depths and come back the size of a thimble. If you write clearly with a waterproof marker you can still read it after the shrinking. People will put the dive number and the scientists name along with the location. Many put their kid’s names on them for show and tell at school.

Other forms of Styrofoam came out. Mike Nolan sent a 6-pack cooler down that came back in beautiful shape. It would hold 1 can of beer. Wig heads were cool. They would come back about the size of something you would stick on a pencil. I learned how to give them hair by sticking strands of Poly Pro line in the scalp with a small screwdriver. The “follicles” would close up as the head shrank and held the hair in place.

 Most of the time the volume of cups is easy to handle by using a mesh laundry bag. There was this one time though that that didn’t quite work out.

It was 1986 and we were over the wreck of the Titanic. The U.S. Navy was paying for this show and they brought a lot of people along. So many that they had to bring their own ship, the U.S.S. Ortolon. She was a submarine rescue vessel but they were using her as a hotel. There would be several transfers ship to ship each day. The Ortolon was full ship with about 450 men aboard. For their souvenirs they sent over many trash bags full of cups. It was an overwhelming volume of cups!

One big problem with cups is that if one slides inside another and then shrinks they will never come apart again. My solution to this was to string them like pop corn on a Christmas tree. I used a narrow cotter pin and a 20 ft piece of thin but strong nylon line.

I threaded the cups butt to butt and open end to open end to keep them apart. We did 4 of these 20 ft. strings and it didn’t even put a dent in the pile of trash bags of cups. Back by the motor controllers on Alvin is a cavity that is protected by the sub's skin that would hold the cups nicely. To get them in there we stuffed them through a limber hole at the top of the skin. Limber holes let water or air flow in and out of this cavity easily. I should say now that this limber hole was located about 6 inches from the port aft thruster.

Ralph had the first dive. He got to the bottom but didn’t stay long due to a flooded battery tank. Alvin was on deck by noon and we worked all night to get it ready for the next day. It was a short dive but long enough to get the cups shrunk. The next day we doubled our efforts and stuffed twice as many strings of cups in that cavity as the day before. A piece of duct tape and we were good to go. A brilliant plan. Dudley had the second dive down to the wreck. Everything was going smooth till midday when Dudley called up and said the port aft thruster was not working. No big deal, he just disabled it and continued on for the rest of a normal dive. We never put 2 and 2 together at this point.

After running his batteries down on a full day at the bottom Dudley dropped his weights and headed for the surface. 2 ½ hours later he popped up right where we expected him to. The little white sub with the orange sail and hundreds of white dots floating all around it. What the hell is that?! That, is all those damned cups! I guess when the duct tape gave way covering the limber hole that port aft thruster sucked up those cups like Auntie Em’s house in a twister! I must have pulled 60 yards of that nylon line from around the shaft of that thruster. That’s what caused it to fault out. Oops!!

Well, no harm no foul I say. Losing the thruster during the dive didn’t slow Dudley down. The Navy boys lost some cups but they had bags full more to go. And to top it all off we got 3 hours of overtime to replace the blown motor controller. Not a bad day after all!

Roger Maloof

On the same day I started, the Alvin group also hired a mechanic, Roger Maloof. We sat across from each other in the Personnel Office early that morning frantically signing all the paperwork needed to become employees so we could dash down to the dock and get aboard the Lulu which was sailing in a couple of hours.

Roger was a few years older than me, maybe 30 at the time. He was about my build with dark hair, glasses and a quick wit to go with his easy sense of humor. We both shared one thing in common on that first trip on the Twin Tubes of Terror, we were both sick as dogs.

Don Carlos would be Rogers’s immediate supervisor in the mechanical department. Dave Sanders and Jim Hardiman would fill out that crew. Don liked being in charge and kept the boys busy even if it was make-work. Maybe a month into the job Don had Roger scrape the paint off the Mahue oil pump and repaint it. The pump looked fine. Maybe just a little rust here or there. This was finally the last straw for Roger. He threw down his paint scraper and went into a rant about how he didn’t hump a radio up and down the hills of Vietnam and then go to graduate school for a Masters degree just to do shit jobs for some self important asshole! He ranted and raved to the point where he said “Fuck you! I quit!”, Got himself a resin chair and sat up on the bow. That was one thing about the Lulu; you couldn’t get more that 50 feet from some one if you tried.

Ralph at this point had to get involved. There were a couple of radio calls back to Barrie on the beach and soon enough Ralph got us all together and announced that Roger was now Barrie’s liaison to the mechanical group at sea. Unknown to us Ops. Monkeys, Roger had a deal with Barrie that he would go to sea with us for three months to get the lay of the land so to speak. He would then be the resident mechanical engineer back in the office. We thought he was just one of us, not future office scum.

Roger was a good guy and none of this had an effect on the group dynamic. He and Don got along well. He was a good engineer and came up with top-notch ideas and solutions to the mechanical problems and modernization of the sub. I came to call him “Roger Maloof, Liaison to the Elite”.

Radioactive Spill

Another good practical joke was the “Radioactive Spill”. We were tied up in a shipyard near Tampa, Fla. A real garden spot in Ybor City. This was a typical four-day port stop to off-load one science party and on-load the next one. One piece of gear that came aboard was a Radio Isotope Van. A modified 20 ft. shipping container to be used as a portable clean laboratory. They are very common today but this was the first one we had seen on the Atlantis II. The radio isotopes are used for a variety of things in scientific experiments.

To make accurate measurements, a background level of radiation from the ship has to be established. The local University of Tampa had a technician come and take swabs from all over the ship. The gal they sent over was really cute and every guy on board took notice. Many talked to her and found out she was working with “radiation” and that was what this new van was about.

Right on schedule, two days later, we pulled in our lines and headed out for the next trip. We would be studying the West Florida Escarpment. This brought us about 100 miles off shore.

This being the early eighties we didn’t have E-mail like we do today using satellites.

We did have the K-Pro computer that was the precursor to today’s email system only it used the radio. Every day the ships radio officer would download a brief newspaper from a news service. No in-depth stories, just a paragraph or so on any topic. He would make a copy of this three or four page document and put one copy in the science mess and one in the crew's mess.

About a week into the trip one of the Alvin techs, Paul Tibetts went into action. As soon as the newspapers were put out for the day Paul collected them and ran to the K-Pro to add his own Paragraph. It Read:

Port of Tampa:

"The Research Vessel Atlantis II was denied entry to this port today due to a radioactive spill on board." The article went on to tell of the horrors of nuclear contamination and that the ship may be kept at sea for months with all hands aboard. Once nicely printed, the newspapers were put back where they belonged and we stood back to see what was going to happen.

I didn’t take long. Most of the crew takes coffee at 10 am and it’s their first look at the news for the day. The boys in the Engine room bought it hook, line, and sinker. “I have plane reservations! I can’t be kept aboard!” All these complaints and worries went strait to the Chief and he went straight to the Captain who was going to get to the bottom of this!!

It took them only about an hour to figure out how the fake story got in the paper. Paul fessed up saying that he didn’t think it would cause the row that it did. No real harm was done but the Captain still gave him an ass chewing about messing with official ships documents.

Pilots' Parties

There are several steps to becoming an Alvin pilot. Some of the rules have changed over the years and I’ve seen them pushed aside to rush a special candidate through. It’s a lot like the WHOI Polices and Practices Manual, for you it’s the law but for management it’s a guide line. In my day you had to go through an overhaul as part of the requirements for pilot. This was to ensure that you knew the sub inside and out. As a pilot you have to know everyone's job, mechanical or electrical.

I thought the most effective method of training at that time was Ralph’s list of 100 questions. Just about everything was covered here. At the end of the work day about an hour before dinner we would put a few beers in a bucket of ice and meet up on steel beach. Sitting in a rough semicircle Ralph would throw out a question having to do with maintenance or procedure or the rules. I always liked this format because as the question was tossed around you got answers from many angles. This was especially true when dealing with questions about how to operate the sub. You hear these questions so many times it gets to be like “Hey Ralph, ask me the one about partial pressure”. It really helped all of us learn the sub front to back.

To become a certified pilot you have to have complete knowledge of the sub and it’s procedures to bring two people to the bottom of the ocean and back safely. But when it comes to developing finesse and dexterity with the manipulators or methods of collecting delicate samples for science, you learn that on their time. And it takes a while. I would say that it takes 50 dives to be a good pilot. 50 dives to develop that self confidence with your machine that lets you get the most out of every dive. Getting to that point can be a very frustrating time for the scientists.

At night, over beers, we would talk about how to get that difficult sample or how to best snuggle up to that 700 degree smoker with your 18-ton white elephant. Hands waving in the air like fighter pilots describing battle, these could be some spirited discussions depending on the beer supply. It was a great way to learn because there was no school for this. I had 8 training dives and then my first “solo” dive. Not really solo, I had two passengers. I asked one of them how he felt about going with me on my first and he said he got in the sub with the same blind faith he gets in an airliner with. OK, I can work with that.

There are four basic hurdles to get over on the path to becoming an Alvin pilot. The Science boards, the Engineering boards, the Navy boards and the Pilot’s Party. The first and easiest is the Science board. You don’t start this process till you’ve done most of your training dives and you have some idea of what you are talking about. The Science board will be made up of two to four regular Alvin users. These tend to be WHOI scientists, because the Science board, like the Engineering board, takes place in Woods Hole. They are going to ask questions about science of course. They want to know if you know the difference between lobate pillows and sheet flow, how best to collect things and pretty much want to be assured that your highest priority is the quality of the science. So basically you go in there and tell them what they want to hear. This is the easiest of the four hurdles.

Next on the list is the Engineering board. You’re not going to fool anyone here. This board will be made up of engineers from the Alvin office that literally wrote the book. Maybe an ex-pilot or two. You have to know your shit front and back for this all-day event. You can’t bullshit your way through this like you did the Science board. The board will focus on the construction and upkeep of Alvin. A pilot is expected to know every aspect of the sub. If you were stuck on the bottom and out of contact with the ship, you are the only backup you’re going to get. A candidate will be expected to know every system down to the last nut and bolt.

After completing these first two boards the Navy board will be scheduled. This can take some time so it’s back to the ship to get in a couple more training dives. The Navy board takes place in San Diego at the headquarters of Submarine Development Group One. Back in the 80’s and 90’s the Navy was still operating Seacliff and Turtle, subs very similar to Alvin in both construction and operation so they always had qualified pilots around that could give you a good grilling. Today with those subs retired, I can only wonder how they will challenge a pilot in training at that board as it’s all about procedure and the rules of the road. They ask a lot of hypothetical questions. “What would you do if this happened” sort of thing. During my boards after two hours of this sort of cross examination a lieutenant asked the commander running the board if he wanted to ask anything else He replied “No, this guy knows his shit”. And that was that. I had one hurdle left, my Pilot’s Party and I was to become the 39^th civilian ever designated a Deep Submergence Pilot by the U. S. Navy.

The Pilot’s Party is a tradition that goes all the way back to Alvin’s beginning. Because Alvin is owned by the U.S.Navy they give you a set of gold submariner’s dolphins. These are presented to you at the party along with some speeches and a bit of roasting. Not only are you the guest of honor but you get to pay for the whole thing. That’s the catch. Usually scheduled during a port stop, you could have all the Alvin guys, the ships crew, and the off going and on coming science parties attending. It could be 50 or 60 people easy. I have seen guys blow thousands of dollars on their parties.

I think I had the cheapest party ever. I split mine with another new pilot, Jim Aguiar.

This was common as it’s easier for scheduling reasons to bring two pilots in training along at the same time. We were in Punta Arenas, Costa Rica for a regular port stop to off load and on load science. In 1984 Punta Arenas was not much of a town. There was only one paved street and the hospital, though in use, had no glass in the windows. There were a few good restaurants but only one was air conditioned. It was here that the captain said he would buy dinner for the crew while the ship was being sprayed for roaches. Jim and I would pay for the open bar for 4 or 5 hours. A dollar went a long way there. The specialty of the house was a fillet mignon and lobster tail that cost about 5 bucks U.S. and the drinks were cheap as well. That open bar serving 50-plus people set Jim and I back 52 dollars apiece! I never heard of any one getting away that easy on a Pilot’s Party. A few years later a couple of my friends would blow 3 thousand on theirs in Manzanillo, Mexico.

Pillow Lines

Life at sea can get pretty boring sometimes. There’s a lot of waiting around for things to happen, especially when the sub is down. You don’t want to start a fresh project too far after lunch, cause you have to start getting ready for recovery about 3 pm. When you have a lot of time on your hands sometimes the only thing to do is a practical joke.

When the boss was diving, either Dudley or Ralph, It was like a day off. We called them Dudley Days. You could nap or read a book. All the things you can do while your boss is at the bottom of the ocean. The Dude was not the hard ass that Ralph was. Ralph went out of his way to catch you goofing off while Dudley thought we should all take an hour a day to exercise. Half the guys took naps instead.

One day we found out that the Dude was in his room sleeping at 2 in the afternoon. He was Launch Coordinator that day and had the VHF radio turned on by his pillow just in case. This was too easy to pass up. Normally Alvin is on the surface at 4:30 or 5 o’clock, so when Alvin is at just 500 meters depth we launch the small boat, say around 4:15. A phone call to the bridge to get them in on it and we were ready.

The signal to launch the small boat is one short blast of the ships whistle. We did that and backed it up with some realistic radio chatter. As I said, Dudley was the Launch Coordinator for the day so he was supposed to be giving the commands to launch the small boat. After the whistle blew we stood by the boat waiting. We knew which hatch the Dude would come through. And come through it he did, practically at a full run. He was on deck in a split second and could see the boat was still aboard. You could see the pillow lines running down his face. “Where you been Dude?” we asked. “Doing some paper work” he replied wonder why we couldn’t stop laughing.

Pieces Parts

Ah, Mexico. As a friend of mine says “I hate Mexico because it’s a dirty, filthy, nasty place. But I love Mexico because it’s a dirty, filthy, nasty place”. My travels with Alvin brought me to a number of places on the west coast. Most tended to be blue collar towns with some outlying resorts. I’ve never been to the Caribbean side. The nastiest of these towns was Guaymas. Located on the eastern side of the Gulf of California, it’s about 90 miles from the Nevada border. Hot and dusty, it’s a fishing town when the shrimp are in season. The center of town is the Plaza of the Presidents. As you go out from there it just gets poorer and poorer. This is no garden spot.

When I got off the plane at the airport we walked out the back ramp of the 727 stretch. As I walked out the door the heat hit like a fist. My first thought was “Jet exhaust” but no, it was just the ambient temperature. The ship was docked at a commercial pier. Running parallel to the dock were 6 sets of railroad tracks used to bring cargo to and from the ships. In the last few days they had been loading a lot of grain. So sloppy were their methods that all the tracks were filled with spillage. After a few days of short showers and lots of sun the grain began to rot and the flies came out to feed and breed.

We were going crazy on deck trying to work. We were soaked with sweat and covered with flies. I couldn’t wait to get away from there. We had fly paper hanging all over the place and it was amazing how quickly one of them would “fill up”. Once we were at sea we could start to deal with the problem but first we had to get away from that dock. When we did leave we brought a complete food chain with us. There were an uncountable number of flies being eaten by some 50 chickadees that were in turn being eaten by the two sparrow hawks that joined us.

After a few days we noticed the fly population was dropping noticeably. Also there were little piles of beaks and feet with a few yellow feathers. Evidence that the sparrow hawks were on the job. The aerial acrobatics were amazing. The hawks chased the chickadees with blinding speed and maneuvering. We also found a few of the chickadees stuck to the hanging fly paper from trying to get an easy meal. These went over the side as you would leave most of the bird on the paper if you tried to pull it off. Besides, there is nothing nastier that a well used piece of fly paper. About a week later the sparrow hawks disappeared having dispatched all their prey on board.

I’ll be back to Mexico soon and I can promise you I have several rolls of fly paper stashed.

Overhaul

By Will Sellers

The bottom of the ocean is a hostile environment and it takes a toll on equipment. The enormous pressure is hard on materials and the hydrothermal vent fluids are very corrosive. Every two to three years Alvin comes home to Woods Hole for a complete overhaul of all of its systems. Six to seven months are needed to do a thorough job but only four or five are scheduled. Overhaul is always met with anticipation by the operations crew. After being at sea nine months a year for two or three years the thought of working 8 to 5 with weekends off like normal people is very appealing. It doesn’t seem to work out that way though. Every one looks forward to their first over haul but not many look forward to a second.

Overhaul is no small task. It begins with unloading the ship of everything that is Alvin; spare parts, tools and support equipment. It also means you. During overhaul they take away the place that you live on the ship. I’ve heard the old argument of “The poor dears have to pay for their own food and housing” but you have to realize that the Alvin boys are grossly underpaid and a bed and food is part of the deal. This is the first pothole on the road called overhaul.

This huge undertaking is always scheduled for the winter time as Woods Hole is a summer resort community and the men off the ship can find a cheaper place to live, or one at all for that matter, in a winter rental. And that’s about all the help your going to get from the home office. They couldn’t care less if you lived in the street as long as you showed up for work on time. Within a few days you have to be off the ship with all your belongings. A winter rental can be one quarter of the summer price but will still set you back $1000 a month or more. And with all the utilities that go with a New England winter there is no way you can swing it alone on what they pay. Ironic as it seems you wind up sharing a house with two or three of the same guys you spent the last three years at sea with. Being mostly young testosterone charged guys, it leads to a hard-partying, dorm-like atmosphere.

Located on the WHOI dock is the Islin High Bay. This building was built just for Alvin overhauls although it serves many other purposes when Alvin is at sea. Roughly 50 X 100 feet it has a 40 ft. high ceiling with a 25 ton over head crane. A facility like this a necessary to service the submersible. The batteries are removed while the sub is still on the ship due to the infrastructure involved in that. Alvin is then placed on blocks in the middle of the high bay work benches with shelves and cabinets are assembled around the perimeter of the work space for parts and tools. A couple of 20 ft. shipping containers will serve as the electronics shop and an office to deal with the paperwork. And there is a fair amount of that. As Alvin is certified by the U.S. Navy they demand the paper trail that only a bureaucracy like that can generate.

Once a proper shop is set up the dismantling can begin. There isn’t a single piece of the sub that comes off that doesn’t get a complete going over, from the skins getting painted to all the welds in the sphere being tested by ultra sound. Very quickly the sub gets stripped down to its basic components leaving the bare frame in the middle of the room. Off to one side, the sphere sits in its stand and the carpenters build scaffolding around it so the electrical types can get in and out to do their work. The frame, being made of titanium, sees a tremendous amount of strain being lifted out of the water every day. It gets sent to a specialty welding shop in New Jersey to have all of its welds x-rayed looking for cracks to be repaired. The frame could be gone for a couple of months but that’s OK. It’s not needed right away but you do need the space it takes up in the high bay.

Meanwhile work begins on all the individual pieces and sub systems. The list is pretty long. Some items are simple but most are fairly complex. The manipulators are stripped and rebuilt as well as the hydraulic system that powers them. Great emphasis is put on all the safety systems and their redundant backups. Alvin’s sphere has 23 penetrations that go through the hull for electrical and video connections. Many of these penetrators, as many as half, will be replaced and sent to the company that made them for rebuilding. Each one has 24 wires so this means extensive rewiring inside the sphere and outside on the body of the sub.

After being there a couple of weeks the high bay is organized chaos. Ninety percent of the work being done is accomplished by the pilots or the technicians training to become pilots. The work breaks down into three groups; the mechanical section that will care for the hydraulic parts, the variable ballast system, manipulators and the mercury trim system just to name a few. The electrical team will see to all the external wiring, the batteries, explosive bolts and cutters as well as the refitting of all the junction boxes. The electronics team will take care of the inside of the sphere as well as all the cameras, strobes and all the electronics of the surface control station.

A couple of months into the overhaul you get settled into a routine of working 8 or 9 hours a day and having every weekend off. This is a real treat! Quite a different life from being at sea. Too bad it’s not going to last. The honeymoon is over once the frame comes back. For the last 2 or 3 months the work has all been on the individual parts and now that the frame has returned the assembly of the sub can begin. It’s also this time that everyone, particularly the management, realizes that overhaul is more than half over and it’s time to kick it into high gear. The first casualty of this are those weekends off and you find yourself working 7 days a week just to go to sea. It takes 7 months to do a complete overhaul but you get 5. They don’t tell you this up front and that’s why no one looks forward to a second overhaul.

The pace becomes grueling at 12 hour days 6 to 7 days a week. The pressure becomes huge to get the job done in time including threats of any one holding up the completion date loosing their job. I have done 3 overhauls and not one of them was planned well. Each time there is not a long enough period scheduled but management counts on the ops guys giving up any semblance of a life to work 90 hours a week just to go back to sea. Once we got away from the dock and out to sea we still worked the same long hours but without complaint as we were doing it for ourselves and not for the “office scum”.

The loser after every Alvin overhaul is science. They all end the same. As the sailing date draws near all the effort is put on getting the basic sub working so that on the first dives it will go to the bottom and back with all systems related to safety operational as the Navy certification must be satisfied. What science has to put up with is the first 2 or 3 months with no data logger, no strobe triggers for the hand held cameras and dozens of other small but important items that were pushed aside with no priority against getting that Navy certification. They will all get fixed at night after a full dive day by the same 5 or 6 pilots and techs that operate the sub by day.

The one shining star of doing an Alvin overhaul is working with the men of the WHOI shops. On the dock and all around the high bay are the welding, mechanical, electrical and machine shops. Their main function is to support Woods Hole’s ships and all the scientific projects that come up. Of the 1000 people that work at WHOI about half are dedicated to engineering rather than biology or geology. They are closely entwined building the tools, traps, sensors and vehicles that oceanographers need to do their science.

On the wall

In the first floor bathroom of my house hangs an 8x10 photo, matted and framed, of the bow of the Titanic. Caked with rust that gives it a predominantly orange color, the sharp edge of the ship meets the flat muddy ocean floor. 

When I get a comment about it from a visitor I tell them the story of how I had lunch there. I parked Alvin right there in front of the wreck a few feet away. We sat there for about an hour while Martin Bowen flew the little Jason Jr. vehicle around the anchors looking for the printed name: Titanic. 

Every time I look at that picture I remember that moment. It was late in the day so it was getting cold,

down into the 50's, the walls of the sub dripping with the condensation from our breath. I had been driving all day so this was my first chance to have lunch. There I was 2 1/2 miles down looking

out the window eating an apple with no more concern than looking out the living room window into the yard.

Sometimes I look back to that time and it seems so surreal. did I really do that? Would I do it again? Yes, I'm certain of that but alas that job exacts too high a price. Nine months a year away from home,

that I will pass on. But I will always have that picture to remind me.

Oceanus article about Titanic dive

Lulu Launch and Recovery

Launching and recovering Alvin on the Lulu, was a choreography of line handling. There were three tag lines per side, the bow line, the mid line and the aft line. They are used to hold Alvin centered between the hulls after the cradle has been lowered to point that Alvin is floating free.

When Alvin is lowered to the water the hatch is sealed with the three people inside. A launch pilot will get in the sail at water level to drive the sub out using the motor controls in the sail.

The launch pilot will be calling out the commands to walk the sub back between the hulls. All along the pontoons were cleats in strategic positions to make the lines fast. The first call out would be “Bow lines aft!” and the port and starboard bow lines would move to the next cleat aft. Then it was “Mid lines aft!” Then the stern lines. This kept up for 4 or 5 iterations till Alvin was just aft of Lulu and clear of the pontoons. At this point the swimmers would begin detaching the tag lines starting with the aft ones.

Once clear of the ship the swimmers would remove the basket safeties and along with the Launch pilot climb aboard the whaler. Back in those days we used to do something that would probably get you fired now. We would have the coxswain running the Whaler to radio that we were all clear while we were still standing on the sub. Grabbing a hand hold we would hang on as the pilot opened the vents on the ballast tanks and Alvin submerged. I did this a few times but the last time I hung on a bit too long. I have no idea how deep I went before I let go but I do know I was in almost total panic before my head broke the surface and I could draw air into my burning lungs. That was very, very close. Never again. There’s a good reason why this is not allowed any more.

Recovery is trickier, it always is. On launch you’re going from a controlled situation into the variable. Recovery is the opposite and that can lead to surprises. The captain would quarter the Lulu into the seas for stability. There’s a word you usually don’t hear when talking about the Lulu. You had to take those seas at a 45 degree angle on the bow. You didn’t want the waves barreling through the tubes like they would if you headed directly into them and you didn’t want to take then abeam because it would make the ship roll heavily. This angle on the bow really got the corkscrew motion going, big time.

Jon Borden and I manned the bow lines. Because we would be the first to throw our lines we stood all the way aft on each pontoon separated by the 20” gap between the hulls.

This was a wild ride if the seas were up. Dressed in shorts down south or in full foul weather gear up north you found yourself on the pontoons chest deep in foamy seas that could sweep you off your feet. Standing across from Jon, each time the ship would roll to my side his propeller would come out of the water. As big around as he is tall Jon is standing about 8 ft. from it. The prop makes 4 or 5 whooshing sounds as it turns and is plunged back into the seas as the ship rolls the other way. As soon as the prop hits the water I hear a bell ring briefly above me on the bridge. It’s the low oil pressure alarm going off as the prop bites into the sea. This would repeat with every roll of the ship. Seconds later Jon is watching me and the prop on my side come clear of the water.

I have to say at this point that the “AAAARRRRR!!!” factor is just not coming out of my pen. Standing there, ready to throw my line with the seas foaming waist deep, I felt I was right up there with Quequake, ready to throw his harpoon into the great white whale. It was thrilling being in harm's potential way, Mas Macho!! And the camaraderie was huge. Most of us were about 25 years old and thought of ourselves as lusty, macho sailors. Still at that age where you feel a bit indestructible.

On recovery the pilot of the day would open the hatch on the surface and be the recovery pilot. It was never clear to me why this was the opposite of launch. I think it was because Ralph didn’t want to wait for a smoke. Lighting up was the second thing he did after cracking the hatch, the first was turn around in the sail and let out the piss he’d been holding all day all over the sail J box. Ralph could be a class act. 

With the swimmers on either side of the sail, the pilot would drive Alvin between the hulls only after the captain had positioned the Lulu correctly. The first call as the sub approached the stern was “Bow lines out!” and we would throw the swimmers the lines. You had to throw that line across the swimmers path, not at them. We were using inch and a half nylon line with a 5-pound steel hook at the end. Larry Costello took one of these hooks right through the face mask from a rookie who threw it to him. Larry’s OK, but you learn the hard way sometimes.

From there it was the opposite of launch. We would walk the sub forward from cleat to cleat with the pilot calling the cadence till the sub was at the marks and the cradle was raised bringing Alvin up to deck level.

Another exiting thing in this process is the launch and recovery of the whaler before and after each Alvin evolution. The whaler hung from 2 motorized davits aft of the bridge so that it hung athwart ships. It was lowered that 20 ft. to the water with the coxswain aboard so that he was right there to unhook the lift cables as soon as the boat was floating. One person on each pontoon manned a bow and stern line. The Whaler was not in a good position tied sideways between the pontoons and you wanted to cast off as soon as possible. On recovery you wanted to get in there and hook up the lift cable right away and get the boat out of the water. When stepping into or out of the boat you had to make a decisive leap and not fool around. The Whaler could do quite a dance in a good sea.

I never saw anyone hurt but on the trip before I came aboard the Lulu was out working and the University of Miami‘s ship, the R/V Researcher, was there as a hotel for the people who wanted to dive as room on Lulu was limited. One scientist, a man in his 40’s made the big mistake of having on foot on the Whaler and one on the ship. When the Whaler went down on a wave it split his pelvis like a wishbone. They said you could hear him scream back on the Researcher. He never got out of the Whaler and they brought him back to the Researcher who then beat it for port and a hospital.

Once Alvin is secured on deck the scientists will take their samples away and work will begin on the sub. There is always some thing to do into the night. First there are post-dive inspections that often will reveal some thing amiss. Anytime you put a piece of equipment into a hostile environment and, make no mistake, the bottom of the ocean is a hostile environment, there is a lot of care and feeding to maintain that equipment especially if you want to use it every day. Think of sending your television into the salt water 8 hours a day and then wanting to watch it at night. It’s always an up hill battle.

Lulu

Before I came to Woods Hole the only sea time I had done was with the navy and there was damn little of that. I was lucky, in 8 years in the Navy, I went to sea only twice for a couple of weeks each time. All that changed with my first day at work in the Alvin group. In the Navy the smallest ship I’d been on was over 700 ft. long and had more than 3000 men. No women in those days.

Now I was sailing on the R/V Lulu. She was a catamaran of sorts 105 ft. long and 48 ft. of beam. While the berthing for 26 people was Spartan, she had about a 3 -week endurance. We sailed on my first day at work and went out to Georges banks for a 14 day trip doing Alvin ops and return to Woods Hole. The Lulu was not a sea kindly vessel. In fact she was brutal to live and work on. Her nickname was “The Twin Tubes of Terror” and it was well earned. In any kind of sea state she had this corkscrew motion to her that would turn the saltiest sailor green.

Lulu’s hulls were made up of surplus WW II mine sweeping pontoons. They had very thick hulls and were towed behind wooden ships to attract magnetic mines. The pontoons were towed to Woods Hole and the fabrication of Lulu began.

Lulu was born of the need to get the then new submersible Alvin in and out of the water. The two pontoons were joined fore and aft by arches and a deck was built atop that about 12 ft. above the waterline. The center of this deck was a cradle that held Alvin and could be lowered on 4 cables to float the sub between the hulls. Alvin would then back out under its own power. The opposite was true for recovery. 20 ft. shipping containers were placed on deck to be used as workshops by the Alvin techs. This early version of Lulu was towed to where ever they wanted to dive and had no berthing accommodations. By the time I came aboard in 1982 things were very different.

She now had 2 diesel engines that gave her a top speed of 5kts. Forward or backward by the way. The Starboard pontoon was converted to berthing for 19 people. A typical room was about the size of  three phone booths, stacked lying on their sides. This held two bunks and two lockers that were 3ft tall and 18” per side. Pretty tight, you didn’t have much of a wardrobe. An accordion door closed the gap to the passage way. There was so little space in the room that you had to step out into the passageway just to get your pants on. All of this was below the waterline. While tied to the dock you could hear the waves lap against the hull at night and hear the water rush by while under weigh.

One deck up from there was the head. There were 2 toilets with these annoying seats that were spring loaded in the up position. Every one hated them. Although there were 3 sinks they were segregated into: the captains sink and the other 2 that you could use.

Sailors can be a quirky bunch. The large stainless steel shower stall had 2 shower heads but by unwritten law it held one man at a time. Navy showers were the rule as the Lulu was weak in the water department and was always a problem. Woe be to you if the captain or the chief engineer should walk through the head while you were taking a Hollywood shower! Over in the corner was the laundry. A space saving stackable washer and dryer for an apartment. It was used by all 26 aboard as well as all the laundry from the galley. This was a busy machine.

Just forward of the head was the crews lounge. You could seat 4 people in there where the TV and VCR were. It was very tight in there and of course being the early eighties, we were smoking there too.

I think it was the main deck of Lulu that did the most to dispel any confidence you had started to build in the vessel. The deck was made of open grating with a one inch spacing. Many people were unnerved by looking down and seeing the water right there. It had to be that way though especially up by the bow. If it was solid the awesome power of the sea as the bow of the boat pitched down would tear it apart. The open grating allowed the wave to pass up through. Good for the ship but a difficult place to be standing. This was only a problem while under weigh.

When working on the sub you had to be careful. There was a 12 to 18 inch gap around the sub near the cradle. If you dropped anything it was gone with a splash. Jon Borden did this right. He had only been on the job a week. This was his first trip. While in port, Ralph who was also the head E.T. bough a new digital Fluke multi-meter. He told Jon “This is the good meter. It is not to leave the shop” “Yes Ralph”. Well, just a couple of days later Ralph was inside the sub doing his pre-dive. One of the instruments in the basket didn’t check out so he called out to Jon to check for voltage on pins 2 and 3 of connector so and so. Jon went into the van for a meter but all he could find was Ralph’s new Fluke. “Well it’s only for a minute”. He brought it out to the sub and began to check the connector. A tricky thing, you have to hold the connector in one hand while using the 2 meter probes in the other. He balanced the meter on his knee, on a rolling ship. On queue the meter rolled off his knee and fell through the gap next to the sub coming taught on the meter leads to jerk them out and end in a splash that he never heard over the engines. Oops. Jon was never let live that one down. Hell, I’m writing about it 25+ years later. After we were on the AII if you dropped a wrench and it clanged on the deck some one would yell “Splash”.

Working on Lulu’s deck was tough. If we were under weigh and heading into the seas many waves would come crashing up through the grating to end up as heavy spray for the length of the boat. Trying to work on the sub which was centered on deck and a bit aft put you right in the prime spray zone. If it was raining we would have to rig tarps. In rough weather life-lines were stung across the common routes on deck. To get from one pontoon to the other you had to have good timing lest you be out on deck when a wave came up through the grating. It would lift you off your feet.

The Lulu was registered with the Coast Guard as an outboard motor boat. All the way aft on each side of the main deck were 871 Cummings Diesels. They each powered a Tragurtha unit that drove the prop on each side. The Tragurtha unit allowed each prop to steered 360 degrees which in turn were controlled by 2 joysticks up on the bridge. This was no ordinary motor boat. Usually under weigh one prop was locked forward and the other was used for steerage. During the day they would use the Starboard prop for steerage as it was noisy switching back and forth and use the port one at night.

The port pontoon held ships machinery i.e.: Generators, Compressors, Machine tolls and shop. Also the ships freezer. One deck up from there was the galley and Mess. The cook on that boat had a tough job. He worked alone in a small space and cooked for 26 3 times a day. He got some help at each meal from the most junior of the 3 deck hands

Who would help serve and clean up. The galley would only seat 12 so the theme was to sit, eat and get out. You could sit anywhere you wanted to but one seat. That was the captain’s seat. Don’t even go there. The only person who could sit there was the chief engineer and only after the captain was done with it.

The food was always good and plentiful. On the Lulu we got 2 beers and 2 sodas a day. Not bad. Many a colorful personality fill the cooks role over the years but during my time aboard it was Joe Robero. Behind his back he was known as “The Rib Roast”. He hailed from the Azores and I guess was about 55 when I first got there. A rotund man that was more comfortable in his native Portuguese than English. Joe was definitely old school. He was a life-long sailor and was rumored to have a family in the Azores as well as one in New Bedford. Joe was an in your face sort of guy and I guess I was intimidated by him at first. There was the time my 3^rd day on the job that he jumped knee deep in my shit for using a new spoon to stir my coffee. I hadn’t seen the 'duty spoon' marinating there in that glass of tepid brown water. I thought I was on his bad side forever. Later I would learn that it’s just Joe, get over it.

From day one Joe called me Leo. I don’t know why. Maybe he misunderstood me when I said “Will”. Whatever. I was Leo. As I said I was a bit intimidated by him so I didn’t correct him at first. When I finally did he said “Too late, you’re Leo”. And I was. When we transferred Alvin over to the AII Joe came with us and in the galley I was Leo for another couple of years. Joe was a good shipmate, but he was Joe.

All that’s left is Lulu’s bridge. Manned by the captain and the mate, they stood a 6 on and 6 off rotation. A brutal schedule that can’t be maintained more than a couple of weeks because launch or recovery of the sub happened during one of your 6 off. Sleep deprivation eventually sets in. The engine gang stood the same watch.

The bridge was one deck up from the main deck. The higher you go the more motion you get. The Lulu was merciless to begin with but only the strongest of stomach went up there. On my first trip I was seasick as soon as we cleared Vineyard Sound. I was up on deck at dawn to do my job but man, was I miserable. I was sick down to my toenails. My worst hangover was never this bad and it wasn’t going away.

We were a week or so into the trip and I was sitting in the sun on deck while the sub was down. Up to this point I had been there for launch and recoveries but otherwise I was in my rack the rest of the time. I couldn’t shake the seasickness. Ralph walks up to me and says “If you have something to do it will keep your mind off of it.” He had me run a D.C. power cable up to the ships radio. This was a 2 hour job up on the bridge. Ralph had a sadistic streak. If you can’t hack it get off my boat.

Well I hacked it but I was sick as hell right up to the moment we tied up in Woods Hole. I must have lost 10 pounds. We had a week in port then were due to go back out to the same place for another 2 weeks. “We’ll see” I thought at the time. A week later the painful memories had faded to the point that I would give it another try but If I didn’t get over it I was going to have to quit. As it turns out we cleared Vineyard Sound and headed into a fairly rough sea but I was eating those first night, at-sea pork chops with every one else. I haven’t been sea sick since.

After those two trips we were in port for a couple of weeks before setting out for St. Croix in the USVI. But first we stopped in Freeport. My first foreign port! What a disappointment! The Lulu tied up next to the fuel pier, never the nicest part of any port and usually located miles from anywhere. After getting a taxi we found that there are few places to go, just hotel lounges and the big draw, the casino. At the time Freeport’s claim to fame was the casino. Located just 90 miles from the USA when the only legal gambling was in Las Vegas. We were there for a couple of days to take on fuel and it was on to St. Croix.

We had great weather on the way south and docked in Fredrickstead. There are two towns on the island; Fredrickstead is the quiet one on the other side of the island from the capital, Christanstead, where the cruise ships pull in. There was always something going on there. The rest of the island was deadly quiet at night. A gal who tended bar not far from where the ship was docked said there are three things to do at night: you can go to Fredrickstead or you can go to Christianstead or you can go to bed instead. We spent most of the time there doing day operations and V.I.P. dives so we were pulling up to the dock every night. A sailor’s money doesn’t go far under those circumstances.

We spent an eventful month there. One evening some of the guys were sitting on deck and talking over a few beers. The pier Lulu was tied to was about 100 yard long and has a 12 curb all the way around it. We were tied up most of the way down the pier. The night was quiet when a sedan came down the pier and rammed into the abutment at the end of the pier without ever having slowed down. They were going about 25 or 30 when they came to an abrupt stop. They guys on deck bolted off the ship to see if they could help. Just as they got there 2 men get out of the car, one of them limping badly. As my friends approached, the driver flashed some sort of I.D. and said “Secret service” and the two of them walked down the pier and into the night just leaving the car there. When daylight came we got a good look at the car. It was bent right under the windshield so the center of the car had 12 inches more ground clearance. Impressive!

While all this was going on me and the boys were in Cristianstead partying at a bar called Torchies. We were hanging out that night with the first engineer’s girlfriend, Sue. Wayne had the watch on board Lulu that night and couldn’t join us. Sue was a real looker, Very pretty with a great body and those big American breasts. I guess that’s why we were in Torchies that night. It was the weekly wet T-shirt contest and Sue wanted to win it.

The contest took place out back in the courtyard/bar. Along the back of the courtyard was a flat bed trailer that would serve as the stage. Torchies was fairly crowded that night, maybe 150 people out there milling about waiting for the show to start. Since Sue was a contestant she kept getting free bottles of champagne that we were chugging down on the dance floor. By the time the contest got started we were all buzzing pretty good.

As the six contestants got up there on the stage it looked to me like Sue was going to have no trouble winning this one. After the first round of elimination it came down to Sue and one other girl that had large breasts but large shoulders to match. Sue on the other hand had the crowd going wild prancing around the stage in a wet, skin tight white T shirt with no bra. It was coming down to the final vote when Sue’s competition decided to add a talent component to the show and did a couple of cartwheels. She should have stuck with one because half way through the second one she went right off the end of the stage and into the bushes ending her participation in the night’s activities. Sue, not to be out done reached down and grabbed the bottom of her shirt pulling it up over her head to end any speculation as to who the winner was. Sue walked off the stage 500 bucks richer.

Down on the dance floor Jon and I were hoarse from shouting. While we were congratulating Sue who should walk out of the crowd but Bob Ballard with this other guy. Bob had come to St. Croix to be a Woods Hole ambassador for some V.I.P. dives we were doing. Jon, without a moments hesitation walks right up to Bob and lays a lip lock on him. Bob was clearly taken aback and said “I bet you wouldn’t do that to this guy” and without a blink that’s what Jon did. If Bob was surprised this guy was absolutely shocked! How was Jon supposed to know that he was the Secretary of the Navy? His body guards who were a few steps back were not pleased at all.

The next morning we were nursing massive hangovers and getting the sub ready for the days dive. About 9 am the Secretary and his entourage came aboard and avoided us like the plague. One of the men in the SEC/NAV’s party was limping badly and some of the guys recognized him from the car on the pier the night before. He turned out to be the SEC/NAv’s brother in law!

Lightning Strike

One night we were sitting up on steel beach having a few beers. We did this most nights. We would grab a bucket, throw some beers in it and top it off with ice from the machine in the main lab. Usually we would try to convince the cute girls in the science party to join us. The weather was fairly overcast but dry. After a bit it got full dark and the thunder and lightning started. What a show it was. It sounded like we were in the middle of a cloud but there was no rain.

I don’t think I have ever been closer to the origin of a thunder clap. The lightning and the boom of thunder were simultaneous. There were about a half dozen of us sitting up there when our hair started to stand on end and my skin was itching and tingling at the same time. All of a sudden the loudest thunder clap of all began with that great bass tearing sound. At the same time lightning struck the water about 100 yards to port.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that maybe this was a good time to go inside and see what the 8 o’clock movie was. It’s not a good idea to sit on top of the only piece of steel for 300 miles in a lightning storm. We were out of there in an instant.

Other evenings on steel beach were much more pleasant. In a locker on steel beach we kept sheets of packing foam to lie on while sunbathing. Sometimes we would bring a blanket and pillow and spend the night up there on one of those foam sheets while we were under weigh. It was very pleasant to wake up with the dawn up there and there were never any bugs so far from shore.

I do remember being sound asleep up there one night as the ship passed through a rain squall so quick and violent that I couldn’t see my hand at the end of my arm. Drenched in seconds, it was down to my room for the rest of the night.

Jump for it, or You’ve got to be kidding

Sometimes when I look back to those early years of running Alvin off of the AII I think it’s a miracle that no one was maimed or killed. In the beginning we just didn’t know what we were doing with any certainty. We were learning this launch and recovery business as we went along. That’s the thing about being on the leading edge; every one is waiting to see how you do it first before sticking their neck out.

Jon Borden and I did more of these early launch and recoveries than any one else. We spent a lot of time at the bottom of the learning curve.

One day in particular the weather was a bit rough on launch and stayed that way all day. Once the call is made to Alvin to leave the bottom it can take two and a half hours for it to get to the surface. A lot can happen in that short time and on this day it did. The wind freshened considerably and built the seas to a point that was becoming a big problem. As Jon and I were suiting up for the swim the Chief Pilot, Ralph Hollis came up to us and said “ It’s too rough to launch the small boat, you’re going to have to jump for it and ride the sub in.” Ralph was not known for his bubbly sense of humor so we knew this was no joke. This had never been done before but what the hell, we’re game, stupid but game.

We wrapped the basket safety lines around our waists, one each and I put the sound powered phone in a zip lock bag. That thing never works when it’s wet. As Jon and I stood on the side of the ship outboard of the rail we were ready in full wet-suits, masks and fins as the captain brought the ship as close as he dared in those seas. After jumping off the ship we still had to swim about 100 feet. That doesn’t sound very far but in those big seas and that wind it was tough. I was swimming one-handed as I held the phone out of the water. By the time we got aboard Alvin it was full dark, at least it wasn’t raining.

Since the ship needed to keep moving to maintain control they did a big circle so they could make another pass by us and throw the tow bridle. This turned out to be a big pain. We had to swim out that same 100 feet to grab it and swim back pulling this thing through those seas. I smoked about 30 cigarettes a day back then and so did Jon. This was turning into an afternoon’s work!

While we were hooking up the safeties and the tow bridle the ship did another big circle while paying out the tow line behind it. As they came by us again the Captain turned the ships head a bit to drag the tow line across our bow. This worked well and we were soon under tow and headed for the ship.

Hiding behind the sail, we tried to hang on as the sub was pulled through the waves. It was here that it occurred to me just how stupid we were. We were dressed in black wet-suits with black hoods. It was full dark and we didn’t have a light of any kind. No strobe, no Cyalume stick, no flashlight. Not even a whistle. If one of us was washed off the sub, something that does happen, the ship would not be able to stop.

We were hundreds of miles off shore. The chances of finding some one dressed in black at night were remote at best. Also it was only around 7 pm. With the water temp in the 50’s, surviving till daylight was very unlikely. This is what I meant about the bottom of the learning curve. This little problem had slipped through the cracks till now.

Well, this was all very real now. Not many people get put in a position of being faced with their own mortality and here on this job I’d faced it a few times already and hadn’t even tried to go to the bottom of the ocean yet! With a white knuckle grip we waited as the ship pulled us in under the A-frame. Everything went as it should even in those big seas but we were conscious to maintain a solid grip. Slipping and falling was not an option.

As Alvin is pulled from the water it can swing like a pendulum at the end of its lift line. Normally you jump off at deck level and the boat picks you up. Hanging on to the sub on the way up was quite a ride. As Alvin was pulled closer to mating with the A-frame the motion of the pendulum became quicker and crisper until it was seated with a hard clunk.

I’m surprised I didn’t pull the hand holds I had a death grip on right off the sub! Once we landed safely on deck the boys brought the ladder over and we climbed down. No problem, just another day at the office.

J.B. & A.D.

We spent one summer working up and down the Pacific coast of Mexico. We must have pulled into Acapulco a half dozen times and got to know it fairly well. We had our favorite restaurants and clubs but we went shopping too. Down on the main drag we found a large department store with a lot of bin merchandise. I bought some sneakers there that I’ll talk about later but it was what Jon and A.D. bought that was so cool. They went shopping for T shirts but wound up with something special for the next trip.

A.D. Colburn was Jon’s swim partner now that I had become a pilot and never had time for any swim fun. A.D. was the ship’s second mate. We had sailed with him before on the Lulu. He’s a good responsible guy and is now the Captain of the R/V Atlantis, (new host ship for Alvin since 1996).

We left port on time with a full science team and a National Geographic film crew who were putting together a documentary. As with any documentary of this type you have to have that dramatic footage of man and machine in the elements and an Alvin recovery has all of that. It was a calm day so it wasn’t going to be that dramatic but it was a start and the film crew set up on the stern to take it all in.

Jon and A.D. were the swimmers that day and off they went in the small boat. I was the Launch Coordinator so I was setting up for the recovery. Things proceeded normally and Alvin was soon under tow. The first thing I noticed was that the boys were standing behind the sail and on such a calm day. Usually they would be standing on either side of the sail.

With the National Geographic crew filming away Jon and A.D. waited till they were close in before stepping out from behind the sail. When they left the ship they were wearing their usual swim trunks. But now both were standing there in identical leopard print, dental floss Speedo things. They didn’t leave much to the imagination. It was hilarious! The National Geo guys kept filming but you knew that this footage was not going to see the light of day.

As for those sneakers I bought, they met their demise about a month later. They set me back 2 dollars a pair. Rubber soled with canvas tops I thought they would be good for shipboard life. We work with a lot of different oils that can be real hard on foot gear. I figured these were disposable.

We were up in Guaymas, Mexico for our next port stop. I had never been anyplace so hot. If you were working out on deck with hand tools you had to wear gloves or picking up a wrench that had been in the sun would burn the hand. After lunch one day I was standing on the deck talking to the Boson. I guess I stood in one spot for too long because when I turned to leave my feet were stuck to the deck. When I lifted my foot half of my sneaker stayed melted to the deck and the rest came away like pizza cheese. My good 2 dollar Mexican sneakers.

I saw Alvin coming up

Not all recoveries were terrifying, potentially dismembering events. Most were actually fun and in the flat calm weather you could do it with your eyes closed. 

We set out one afternoon in the Pacific that was as flat as the sea can get. Not a hint of a swell or ripple. If you dropped a quarter or a shiny washer overboard you could watch it sink for what seemed like hundreds of feet. I’ve never seen water so clear.

It was a very hot day so we launched the small boat a bit early so we could get a little swim time in. We had a couple of grad students along for the ride. As long as the weather was good we could take tourists out with us. Most wanted better camera shots of the whole ship. You had a better chance at getting a seat if you were cute and female(hey, we were young guys whose social lives at sea revolved around the graduate students who came to sea).

The Surface Controller had vectored us over to the area where he had calculated that Alvin was coming up. Once on the spot we killed the motor and four of us jumped over the side while the coxswain stayed in the boat. Wearing trunks, fins, mask and snorkel, I floated on my stomach alone about 30 yards from the boat. Swimming in the open ocean is a very different thing all together. This is definitely the deep end of the pool. Looking at the sun's rays penetrating down into that infinite depth with your ears submerged is a total sensory experience.

I could hear the other swimmers and some noise from the small boat but in the background was something else. It was very faint but I recognized it right away, it was Alvin’s underwater telephone. At 13 kHz it was right in the middle of the human audio band. I knew it was close so I concentrated looking down and breathing through the snorkel. It wasn’t long before I spotted it. Just a small white dot at the limit of my vision.

Like a bad pixel on a very large screen with all the rays of light dancing through the water.

I lay perfectly still with my arms out stretched watching Alvin get bigger and bigger. It finally came to the surface about 50 yards in front of me. There’s one good thing about being on the bottom of the learning curve. They would never let you do that now. The lawyers have had their hand in it and all the fun is gone from swimming now.