Behind the Scenes

Today, we got a tour of the boat and got to go “behind the scenes” to talk to the Captain and the Drilling Supervisor. Here’s some places we went:

The Bridge (Where the captain steers the boat). Up here, Captain Alex explains to us that he’s only in control of the boat’s direction until we get to our site. Then he turns on the Dynamic Positioning (image to the left) which keeps the boat positioned over our site. (See QYMH for a description of the Dynamic Positioning on board.) While in transit, though, Captain Alex uses this entire panel of computers and dials and buttons (image to the right) to control the boats direction and speed. The chair in the back is the Captain's Chair!!

Here are some other shots from the bridge:

Wheel (for direction) and dial (for speed). Remember the big dial in the movie "Titanic" that had the huge lever? This is exactly the same thing, just smaller. To the right is a side shot of it. The speeds in each direction are "Dead Slow", "Slow", "Half" and "Full".

(Part of) The Dynamic Positioning System. One of the clocks on top is Greenwich time and the other is local time. The positioning system is very complicated and the control panel is HUGE! Very cool though! The blue panel on the right shows the ships position relative to our research site. The panel on the right shows how much power is being supplied to the thrusters, the cabin, the drill, etc. There's another panel that shows which thrusters are on, how fast they're running and in what direction. Thanks, Captain Alex for the awesome tour!!

Next up on our tour was the HeliDeck (Where the helicopter lands). Up here we got an awesome view of the crew loading the “string” (long tan thing in right image) for a drilling test run before we start our actual operations. (See 60 African Elephants for a description of the "string" and more pictures.) We have to do a test run to see how far we can put the drill into the ocean crust without turning the drill bit. So, we’ve loaded a heavier-than-usual drill bit onto the bottom of the string and then we will lower it into the ocean crust. Last time, they got 40 meters deep. This time, we’re hoping for 60 or more meters. Once we do that, then we’ll pull the string back up, move to our next site and do it again. These test runs are done ~30 m away from our actual drill sites. Assuming all goes well, we will begin drilling operations after our 2 tests. Drill, baby, drill!

Then we got to see the drilling deck up close!

Bubba, the Drilling Supervisor, controls the drilling machinery from the "Dog House". The long lever is the brake. The large dial tells Bubba how much pressure the string is experience. There are lots of other dials involved in this complicated operation but no need to worry! Bubba has been doing this for over 35 years!! Bubba is also the inspiration for the cartoon character seen on the Deep Earth Academy website.

The Re-entry cone which is over 6 feet in diameter. Once the hole is drilled the first time, we need to go back and re-enter the hole to drill deeper with a smaller drill bit. So the re-entry cone is put on the top of the hole so we can see it with the cameras that are mounted on the drill. Each re-entry cone has the hole number on it (see it on the bottom left in white paint?). This hole's number just happens to be U1362-A.

View from the drill floor. The drillers are hard at work attaching the string.