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Journals 2008/2009Nancy Sills
August 18, 2009 Well, some time in the night "the Beast" started up again. This is the name I have lovingly given the compressor. Its engine runs loudly and non-stop, most of the time. Every 30-40 seconds it emits a swoosh of air that is high pitched. If I had ever heard a dragon - that is what I would imagine it would sound like. The morning went smoothly running another line and waiting to hear that the boat with supplies had left from Woods Hole. We recovered the streamer and guns. Blessed silence with the compressor turned off for a while. There are two hurricanes out around the mid-Atlantic: Ana and Bill. Ana probably won't affect us but Bill, if it keeps on its present course, will be headed our way by Sunday. We'll keep an eye on that. The boat from Woods Hole arrived around 2:00 and we transferred the oil and supplies over. It was kind of exciting. I was amazed at how the WHOI boat was bobbing around all over the place as the ENDEAVOR just seemed to sit there. It looked so small compared to us.  We traveled at 13 knots to blow out the carbon deposits in the engine after going so slowly, 2-3 knots, for the last 7 days. We headed back to line 21 to begin collecting data. However before we could begin, one of the birds on the streamer had to be replaced. Birds look like model airplanes and are attached to the streamer to keep it at a specific depth in the water. They have fins that move in the water to make it go higher or lower. Each one has a pressure sensor in them to "tell" the bird to change the angle of the fins to make it go up and down.
We are back on line now and everything is running as it should. We are still only firing one gun so that it will not overheat the compressor.
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