Flooding

Nothing much new to report, we are still just chug a lugging across the Pacific, still on track to make Hawaii by 12pm local time…prob be all tied up by 5 pm local time. We had a flooding alarm go off on the tow around 5 am this morning. We waited for daylight and then got to work checking it out. Our Mast Diver, Chief Mate, and another Diver hoped into the Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB, think super dinghy) and launched it to go check it out. It was about that time that the seas started to pick up, going at about 12 feet with 16 foot rollers coming in every so often. And since they are coming from directly astern, we were really rolling around…not the easiest conditions to launch a little boat in. But it needed to be done. So they launched it after a few oh SHI#(# moments and headed over the Cleveland . The Master Diver hoped onto a ladder and went up the 50 feet to get on the deck. And the Cleveland was rolling pretty bad too..I’m sure glad I wasn’t the one that had to do it. Though it did look pretty exciting. He went to scope things out and see if we needed more people to go aboard and start dewatering procedures if the flooding was bad enough.

Turns out it was only about a foot of flooding in shaft alley (the part of the boat way down in the bottom where a drive shaft connects to the engine that turns it to turn the propellers. It’s a slow leak, one that we don’t have to worry about. He sealed off shaft alley so just in case it got worse, the flooding would only be in shaft alley and the ship wouldn’t be in danger of sinking. We didn’t need to send any more sailors on board to de water, that can wait till Hawaii . So he crawled back to the RHIB, the motored back on over and we picked them back up. The pick up was easier than the launch because as soon as they were on the hook to the crane they were yanked outta the water and more stable. When they were launched in the water, there were a few moments where they were really be bounced against the hull by some waves. All in all, it went pretty well. The whole procedure lasted about 3.5 hours.