Monday, December 13, 2010

ALVIN makes its LAST DIVE tomorrow before retiring

Well seems like the good old satellite internet has just been to slow up until now for me to post from the Gulf. Glad to be back! We've seen 12-20ft swells over the last 2 days as the wind kicked up to over 40 knots! I'll be posting that footage as soon as we get back to port in Gulfport MS. That should be on Wednesday now as we extended the trip one more day to get ALVIN one last dive. That dive will be with Chuck Fischer and Mike deGruy. This will be ALVINs LAST DIVE after over 50 years.

SENTRY is an amazing AUV because it literally acts as a scout before each ALVIN dive. The data from SENTRY provides an accurate underwater road map for ALVIN to follow and is an essential element to the success of each dive made.

OK a little on the weather...WOW! Watching waves crest above the horizon is quite a sight and getting swamped while filming TWICE was exhilarating and COLD! We have passed many oil platforms that are humongous in size and it's amazing that they can be out here in such weather and still be functioning. They are basically SHIPS at sea that do not move...
An interesting fact is that they do move several meters and when drilling at these great depths the pipe actually can bend or flex no problem, we hope!

Well I have to get back to filming, more later!