Our third and final day at the pylon was on Saturday, August 27th.
Our originally scheduled departure day was Thursday, August 25th, and since the underwater instruments were all working properly it was decided that most of the installation team (Derek, Rachel, Ross) would leave on schedule. I extended my stay by four days to wait for weather and seas to ease up and hopefully give me one more day at the pylon to troubleshoot the misbehaving anemometer.
We couldn't do this last operation by rowboat, since I needed a working surface where I could (1) retrieve the "brain" and the anemometer, (2) power the brain off the boat battery and connect the anemometer, and (3) use my laptop to connect directly to the brain and determine what was wrong with the wind sensor. Some way had to be found to bring a larger boat around the island to Lao Lao Bay.
Unfortunately, Wednesday and Thursday saw some of the worst weather of our stay, and TS Talas formed on the Thursday from all of the stormclouds that had been plaguing us. I consulted with Kraig Church of Seafix, Inc. and he eventually settled on Saturday as the last best chance to get a boat to Lao Lao Bay. By then the departing TS Talas had pulled away most of the stormclouds but it left seas on the usually-calm western side of the island a lot rougher in its wake.
Happily the Seafix folks were able to get a good-sized boat to Lao Lao Bay as planned and Saturday morning's operation came off as planned. We also met up with David Benavente (CRM) and Steven Johnson (DEQ) who shadowed me all week for training purposes.
As planned, I retrieved the ailing anemometer and the station's "brain" to the boat for diagnosis. It turns out that one of the wires had broken loose from the connectors we use atop the pylon and had to be replaced. Our operation was drawn out longer than expected because of confusion I experienced when my anemometer wiring diagram did not match the wiring I'd previously connected to the datalogger (in March of 2010, so memories were no longer fresh). It turns out that there are two different versions of this manual, one by the instrument manufacturer (RM Young) and one by the datalogger manufacturer (Campbell Scientific), and the latter manual which I'd brought with me had the wrong wiring information for our sensor. By trial and error I was able to determine the correct wiring of the sensor and out of an abundance of caution I installed the project's "spare" anemometer in place of the instrument that had originally been installed and found to be non-working.
Once we finished with the troubleshooting, all equipment was reinstalled and this time CRM's David Benavente donned the protective gear, climbed the station, and turned it on! Again we packed up the station and left not knowing whether everything was working but this time the news from land was good: all systems operational! A picture of the completed station follows:
We are deeply grateful to our hosts on the island: from Coastal Resources Management (CRM) David Benavente, Rodney Camacho, Guy Macaranas and others; from the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ, Steven Johnson; from Seafix Inc, Mark Blackburn, Kraig Church, Jesse (our Saturday boat operator) and others. Speaking for the installation team of Derek Manzello (UMiami/CIMAS), Rachel Kotkowski (NOAA Corps), Ross Timmerman (UHawaii/PacIOOS) and myself (UM/CIMAS), we very much appreciate the warm welcome we were given out in the field and on land, this operation would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of CRM, DEQ and Seafix.
(signed)
Mike Jankulak
photo credit: Steven Johnson