Saturday, May 28, 2005

Hello again from Gray’s Reef.

Well today was a pretty normal day here on the Nancy Foster. This morning we started off with two sets of dives like normal. The work going on during these dives was just a continuation of the work that has been going on all week. No new techniques or equipment were used today.

Later in the day we ended up at the “R-2 Tower,” which is a big yellow tower out in the middle of the ocean used by the US Navy for fighter pilot training (picture to left). According to those that dove on the tower, “That was the best dive yet,” probably because the tower is further away from shore so the water is clearer and the visibility is better.

Now we are back at J-Reef working on Rob’s and Lauren’s experiments. Here at J-Reef we ran into our first major problem. The main engines on the Nancy Foster are not working right now, the engineers think that it is just a computer problem so for right now we are running off of the Z-drives, which are smaller engines used by the ship for maneuvering. The Z-drive engines can move the ship in any direction that it needs to go whether it is sideways, forward, or backward. Now that the engines are off line it may take us a lot longer to get in to port. The captain is saying it will take us 12 hours to get back to port from here using the Z-drives. So hopefully they will get the main engine fixed or it is going to be a long trip back.

Until tomorrow, I am off to fill more SCUBA tanks,

Ryan