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.