We took another drastic step at this station; we removed the CTD from the rosette. Bernadette really wants to make up some time because we only have so many science days left. She doesn't want a really slow cast with the full rosette. We probably couldn't even deploy the full rosette with the weather as it is. Here we are taking the CTD out of the rosette. The first picture is of Dan and Eric working on the connection, with Bernadette supervising in the background with a cup of tea. Eric and Dan run the auto analyzer for nutrients. Eric works at Southern Mississippi University. His house was destroyed by Katrina. He showed us pictures of his FEMA trailer the other day. He and Dan have sailed together a lot. They're the two people I play cribbage with. In the second picture we're getting ready to hoist the rosette so that we can pull the CTD out from the bottom. After we got it out, Parisa thought that we all looked like a CalTrans workgroup; five people were standing around watching Scott hook everything up. We lowered the CTD in its frame with some weights attached and the altimeter. The cast went very quickly; no bottle stops and we brought it up at 75 meters/minute. Pretty easy work sitting at the console. It was amusing watching Scott recover it. Basically he just reached out and grabbed it as the winch lowered it to the deck.
Here's what it looked like. "Very Kluge," as Scott said. There are probably 50 zip ties holding it all together. "ODF is held together with zip ties and black tape" is what Dan had to say on the subject.
