Crazy Pete Addicks' Travel Journal

The wild cross country ramblings of Pete Addicks.

03/18/08 Pete's offshore journal # God knows which 'cuz I skipped over so much that I still have to write about

But, I wanted to disseminate what I'm doing offshore.

In this film, [and this one] you will see what's known as a "moon pool". AKA Hole in a boat. We are experiencing some "weather". The seas are only about 10-15' high, which is negligible in comparison to my Bering jaunt. We are not sending divers into the water in these conditions, but I am working over this heaving mass of saltwater. What we are doing until this "weather" passes is implementing a $10,000 tool called a "Mesotech". This Mesotech is mounted on a tripod, and has a rotating head that takes high resolution images of the sunken oil rigs that we drop it on.

What you can see hanging over the moon pool are:

Blue on the left foreground: This is called a "LARS" (Launch and Recovery System) package. It consists of a pneumatic tugger which is diverspeak for air powered winch and a snatchblock to fairlead a cable through. At the end of this cable is a 200 lb weight that we use to keep the dive bell from moving around too much.

Yellow on the right background: Is another LARS package. This one is specifically for divers. If you can see, there are 2 cages hanging from cables. The one closest to the forefront is a "dive bell". We keep that in the water at about 50', and because this is a dynamic positioning boat, the divers keep their umbilicals clipped in at 88 feet to the top of the bell, to keep from being sucked in to the screws (propellers) which are about 100 feet away. Behind that is the "stage" which we use to lower divers into the moon pool, and to bring them back up again.

Cheers
Pete