I have moved the instrument tracking spreadsheet into the project folder in the "Deployed Configuration Tracking" folder. It is available through the Project Documentation Link above. Here's also the direct link. UpperCanyonInstrumentTrackingDatabase.xls

Here's is a link to the UPDATED Upper Canyon Optical Network diagrams for the "deployed" 10020208-1.2_DeployedOpticalConfig.pdf and "backup" 10020209-1.2_BackupOpticalConfig.pdf systems in the building G lab. The latest versions of these documents are also in the document library in the node-to-node communications folder.

I added the Globalstar connectivity test procedure.

Thanks to the hard work of many, the Surface buoy was deployed at about 5PM yesterday (Thursday) from the Pt. Sur. I'm pretty sore today - as I'm sure are a few others - from dragging the Snubber around and attaching over a hundred floats. Andy, everyone kept asking where you were! The loading on the Pt. Sur went very smoothly with the winch and buoy being loaded on Tuesday and the hookups, totes and final preparations on Wednesday. We sailed at 7:30AM Thursday on schedule with 11 hands from OSG, Marine Ops, Engineering and CeNCOOS into perfect weather for a buoy deployment. The buoy and Snubber were staged on the Pt. Sur deck as they had been for the MSE deployment with the top of the buoy facing outboard and the Snubber looped out through the starboard deck bulwark and around the stern and though the A-frame. After we left the dock and there was vertical clearance the wind generator was erected in place. The 400V safety switch was also put in the "on" position. The buoy was rigged with a lifting strap bridle that included a strap to the tower which forced the buoy to about a 45 degree angle on the pick. This was an improvement over the single point lift of previous deployments where the buoy balanced more horizontally. One consequence of this was that after the Snubber was attached it made this pick difficult in the constrained space for the Snubber and the buoy between the deck crane and the bulwark around the A-frame. The buoy was therefore lifted horizontally with a single pick and positioned outboard of the interference area and re-acquired with the two strap bridle. Once the Snubber and buoy had enough room there was no more difficulty. The two point pick and taglines kept the buoy very stable after it was moved outboard and there was no urgency in slipping the Snubber over the side and out the stern. Mike fully slipped out both splice tubes and we dragged the pre-installed bending strain relief and about 5-8 floats out to the stern to act as a bending strain relief for the riser cable as the last of the Snubber was slipped out. Even with all the Snubber off the boat, the buoy riding at 45 degrees gave the impression it could have gone either way if just dropped, however there was a controlled lowering into the water and as the buoyancy of the float began to assert itself the buoy stood up. The release was not popped until it was clear that the buoy had found its feet and was stable. The weather really helped here. The next steps proceeded as they had for the last deployment. After paying out a few hundred meters of cable with the pre-installed upper floats and bending strain relief providing cable protection over the stern, all the floats above the clamp were installed in stages. This actually went pretty smoothly with everyone helping out in assembly line fashion. The only improvement that was obvious to me, as I was continually blasted in the face with abrasive cutoff and metal debris at high velocity, was a good hand shear to efficiently cut off the band extra lengths. The band tightening and crimping tools worked perfectly. With the cable floats going over the stern and on the water surface the cable could be let out easily and there was little cable tension. As more cable was paid out the tension gradually increased but the floats provided excellent cable protection. When the cable clamp location was reached tension was quite high, but the floats were still on the surface off the stern so the cable environment was still good. After the float clamp attachment the installation of the remainder of the floats took place, now with the floats paying out with the cable. The rest of the float and bending strain relief installation took place without incident. Although he was not there, Andy did a good job of making sure that all the float system and anchor elements were staged properly and we had no problems with installation.  When the last of the floated section was complete the cable was now moved to the 48" stringing block and hoisted aloft. The tensions were now about 1000 lbs. or more on the cable. The wind began to blow harder (~ 10-15 kts.?) from the south and the big bluff bow the Pt. Sur caused some crabbing along as they tried to maintain heading at slow speed. With the stringing block craned all the way aft and the A-Frame moved up this was not much of a problem. The cable was payed out to the end termination. There was some difficulty with getting the last few wraps of cable off the winch, there is little room around the termination hardware and the cable tends to get under and caught on it. At this point the cable normally has high tension and the sharp edges of the termination could spell disaster here. Fortunately Johnny was able to get the cable past the termination, aided by good work from the Pt. Sur skipper who backed down to ease cable tension at the critical moments. We had a problem with this last time also. Need to figure out how to improve the situation here. Maybe there should be less than one wrap of cable and the termination in this drum section. The pilot line on the winch was paid out to bring the termination down to the stern of the vessel and the cable load transferred to shackles on the termination body and a strap. The end tube was attached with difficulty due to the hardware moving around, the thick cable protection we installed and the inherent difficulty of mating the ODI dry-mate connector which has poor alignment keys. The job was also made much more difficult by my attempt to save time by pre-attaching the jumper lead to the bottom float. I thought that by careful measurement I could attach the jumper as we wanted it in the final configuration and not be time pressured for this important job. On the last deployment the entire jumper was allowed to float free from the anchor chain below the releases to the ROVmate connector in the holder on the anchor after ROV mating. This turned out to be a mistake as the extra length of cable ended up wrapping around the anchor chain, chaffing on the anchor float and also getting pinched between a shackle and the anchor tube. For this deployment the length of jumper above the float was only that amount needed to remain unloaded. This length was fastened securely with tie wraps to the first tie point on the float. The length of the jumper from the float to the anchor ROVmate connector holder was also measured, a few extra feet added for slack and the extra jumper fastened permanently to the float with heavy duty tie wraps (175lbs. breaking strength). The length reserved for the ROV connection was bungee corded in as usual. One extra loop was attached with weak tie wraps so that the ROV could have an additional loop of cable if necessary. As stated above, this pre-work constrained the cable jumper when it came time to attach it and the bottom termination tube on the rear deck. Because there is usually a reasonable final tow time before anchor release, it would have been faster probably to leave the jumper free and only make the anchor float attachment after mating it to the riser cable termination. It was tricky and risky to make the optical connector mate under constrained conditions. Once the termination was complete we turned on 400V in the riser cable. The results were that we saw nominal current through the power loopback resistor and we had 400V ground fault readings of a few micro Amps, also OK. We checked the optics and the optical loopback readings were good, port 0 was -15dB and port 1 was -11dB. Note that these are loopback readings and therefore approximately twice the actual optical attenuation of a channel. These readings are identical to those measured on shore prior to breaking the system down for loading and are very good (link max. is -30dB). After testing the power was shut back down and final preparations were made for the anchor drop. The target drop was calculated to be 225 meters or 0.12 nm. A final warning was given by the Pt. Sur mate when we were about 3 minutes from the drop site. It took a little longer than 3 minutes however to transfer the cable load from the deck crane to the anchor float and then reposition the crane for lifting the anchor skid plate. I believe we dropped at 0.15nm or slightly more past the anchor site or at least 270 meters. A little better communication with the Pt. Sur crew on my part here would have helped. In the past we have had a way point for the exact drop site and a more careful countdown so there was adequate preparation time and the anchor went over exactly at the intended drop site. Following the anchor drop we immediately left the site and steamed for Moss Landing. We were able to see the buoy being dragged along at what the buoy GPS data reported as 7.5 kts with bow waves breaking against the solar panels! At this time we have not yet performed a post-deployment verification of the 400V or optical systems. We currently are not getting data from the Secondary node or the Surface Medusa, we suspect due to a wedged Surface Medusa board. When that is back up we will check out the post-drop cable integrity - stay tuned. As we worked at the site we were able to maintain a high speed Wi-Fi connection for at least 1 nm from the mooring. This is great results and should allow "data vacuuming" of high resolution data from vessels in the area when the system is fully operational.

I have placed the final version of the MTM5 breakaway report in the project Alfresco space and put a link to it under quick links. Here's a direct link also: MTM5 5MAY10 Break away .

I have updated the MUCE breakaway report with all the facts known to date. It is available through the link above and also here: MUCE breakaway report