Dave and Brian's Excellent Adventures

Black Sea 2007, Day 19

There are three reasons I climbed that mast: 1. I’ve never climbed a mast that put me 100’ above anything. 2. The mast is next to all 5 exhaust systems from the generators aboard ship, which coats the mast with a thick layer of soot. Which means I got to keep the white overalls. 3. I needed some good pictures for my blog.

The Flamingo was towed to shore and everyone arrived safely. I’m pretty sure the champagne was flowing as soon as they got their feet on dry land. After the flooding of the Flamingo, all the support equipment between the two ships was pulled down. That includes the WiFi antennas that allowed the press and scientists on-board the Flamingo to watch the video we were transmitting, as well as have Internet access.

The gentleman, Dave Wright, who set it all up was one of the guys that went to shore to enjoy the champagne. Someone needed to take the antenna down. There were calm seas, not a lot going on, and did I mention I got these cool overalls!!!! They didn’t end up very clean.

The Captain has been working on a way to fix our bow-thruster. There was talk of going to a port in Istanbul (the first thing I thought of was, “Yippee! Shore leave!”). After making plans to go to Istanbul, we heard from Dr Ballard. It seems they were talking with the First Lady of Ukraine, and the President offered to fix our bow-thruster. Well, that’s a turn of events!

It seems every newspaper on this side of Europe is covering Yushchenko holding a jar, we recovered, standing next to Dr Ballard. Although it didn’t work out in the end (a NATO ship in a Ukrainian port just ain’t gonna happen anytime soon!) the press for Dr Ballard and IFE is sky-rocketing in this part of the world. Future treks to the Black Sea and this region look promising.

Instead of going to port, the plan is to anchor off of Istanbul, put the blown motor in a chase boat and take it to shore. Hopefully the machine shop can fix it in short-order. Then we’re off to Sinop D, to see another wreck.

By the way, we got the AUV on deck. It was flooded with water.

posted by DaveandBrian @ 5:07 AM