Welcome Aboard The CGC Healy
Catch-Up
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We start our journey with Healy with three reports from CDR Jeff Jackson,
the Executive Officer. Already at sea.
Thanks to Healy website
for helping us catch-up on their present deployment.
All photos are credited: U.S. Coast Guard.
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The Coast Guard Cutter Healy, homeported in Seattle, Washington.
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June 5, 2005
June 5, 2005. Jeff Jackson, Executive Officer
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We’ve had a fairly smooth crossing of the Gulf of Alaska during this first week, with only a day or so of 10’ seas and 35 knot winds, and even then the big icebreaker only managed to roll just 3 or 4 degrees. As I write this, it’s Sunday morning at 11:30 (we’ve crossed a time zone and we’re an hour behind Seattle.) The sun is shining and we’re holding position on top of the charted “b” in Albatross Bank, a fabled stop for Coast Guard crews seeking to pull a few big halibut from the ocean (and the shouts from the fantail tell me that the fishin’ is good.) Pictures of our fishing adventure and some important promotions & award presentations are posted below.
This evening we take on our 2nd helicopter and last five aircrew – the first aircrew flew aboard last Wednesday off Port Angeles. Then we’ll steam west, away from Kodiak Island & towards Unimak Pass, which we will reach on Tuesday. Unimak Pass will mark our arrival in the Bering Sea, which in the winter months is home to some of the fiercest weather on the planet (check out the Discovery Channel series about crab fishing in the Bering – “Dangerous Catch” - if you want to get a sense of the place.) We’ll make a right turn and head north through the Bering Sea to the Bering Strait, where we’ll cross the Arctic Circle and start to encounter our first moderate sea ice. The tough stuff will happen later.
I’d like to start off this series of XO Weekly Updates by thanking all of our loved ones and friends. Your support makes it possible for all of us onboard to handle a polar deployment. I’ve spent a lot of time this past week talking with our officers, chiefs and crew as they sailed HEALY north and worked hard to prepare the ship for the important scientific missions which await. Everybody was upbeat and able to focus on the mission, and they’re only able to do that because of the great support they receive from you.
June 12, 2005
June 12, 2005. Jeff Jackson, Executive Officer
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HEALY is back in the waters she was built for. We crossed the Arctic Circle – 66 degrees 33 minutes North latitude, which is the lowest latitude (a horizontal circle around the earth) where the sun will not set on the longest day of the year, June 21st. Since we will be well above that latitude during this phase of the deployment we won’t see darkness again until we head back south to Dutch Harbor for a port visit in late July.
We pushed through our first ice floes this week. The ice was mostly in bands, with open water for miles between each band. Even on a ship this size, though, the ice gets your attention as it clangs against the hull and jolts us to one side or the other. The ice bands also gave us a chance to see our first arctic wildlife, walruses, which barely raised their heads to acknowledge our presence as we swept by. Big tusks. Glad we’re surrounded by steel.
The crew adapted well to our first minor inconvenience after the dishwasher broke down on Monday and we had to take our meals on paper plates. The engineers and supply folks worked together to figure out what part we needed and, thanks to our shoreside support, we were able to have the part delivered from Seattle to Nome by Thursday. The aviators earned our gratitude – especially from the mess cooks – when they flew into Nome to pick up the part (and also some Anchorage newspapers for the crew.)
On Saturday afternoon we arrived off Barrow, which is every bit as cold as you imagine. The air temperature is just below freezing, and the air is so damp and foggy that ice is forming on rigging high on the ship and dropping down to the decks in marble-sized pieces. That will get your attention. Barrow is semi-famous as the place where the humorist Will Rogers and the aviator Wiley Post died; they crashed their private plane here, and there’s a monument to both men on the site of the crash.
The week also marked the following significant professional accomplishments by the crew:
Ensign Keidi Neimann: Landing Signals Officer (guides the helo to the deck)
Senior Chief Tim Sullivan: Helicopter Control Officer (coordinates ship/helo operations)
Chief Lewis Winningham: Helicopter Control Officer
Boatswain Mate Philip Dawalt: Rigid-hull boat coxswain (drives the boat)
Machinery Technician Robert Myers: Technician of the Watch (monitors ship systems)
Cadet Nora Basile: Junior Officer of the Deck (assists in conning the ship)
Seaman Kenneth McWilliams: Bridge Watchstander (monitors navigation systems)
On Saturday night the Chiefs took over the galley and turned out some great food: Hot wings, Real Hot wings, Philly Cheese Steaks, jalapeno poppers, fries… Healthy? No. But we did end with ice cream (a dairy product.) And we had a Bingo tournament for exercise. The big winners were:
Candy Round - SK2 Chris Sison and LT Laura King
Blockbuster Card - SK2 Chris Sison
Poker Game - AMTC Tom Pudish
Play Station Game - AMT3 Jeff Kortis
MP3 Player - ETCM Curtis Podhora
The mission really begins next week when we spend all day Monday offloading 9 crewmembers and passengers and embarking a 28-member party of scientists. We’ll have our 2 helicopters both working for a full day to make this happen, and the crew will be working hard to get our new guests settled onto the ship. After that, we’ll sail for about 2 weeks along a 300-mile trackline to the north, where our marine science technicians will begin working 24/7 to draw cores of sediment from the bottom of the Chukchi Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) and use our sensors to map the seafloor.
Marine Science Technician Eric Rocklage observes boat operations from HEALY's fantail.
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Seaman Manuel Ponce and Boatswain Mate Ed Traver hold on as Boatswains Mate Phillip Dawalt drives during boat training with HEALY in the background.
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Boatswain Mate John Lohberr leads emergency steering training for Boatswain Mates Steven Duque and Meredith Hitchcock and Seaman Peter Boggeln.
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Quarters on the Flight Deck
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Walruses observe as HEALY passes by.
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Damage Controlman James Pentacost works on the starboard science winch.
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Aviation Electronics Technician Louis Bishop and Chief Aviation Maintenance Technician Tim Santmyer load a hyperbaric dive chamber. Boatswain Mate Phillip Dawalt is inside and Aviation Maintenance Technician Johnny Charles looks on during the diver evacuation training.
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Will Rogers and Wiley Post Memorial - Barrow, AK
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June 19, 2005
June 19, 2005. Jeff Jackson, Executive Officer
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The defining event of the past week was being stuck – “beset” is the proper word – for nearly 4 days. More on that shortly.
We started off Monday by flying our 2 helicopters on several dozen round-trip flights into Barrow, Alaska, to take some folks ashore and embark our 19-member science party. We said goodbye to our shipmates from Seattle’s Naval Engineering Support Unit and Electronics Support Unit (Ensign Meadowcroft, Chief Flynn, and MK1 Whalen) and embarked a few more engineers & technicians to help keep HEALY in top shape.
Our first group of scientists is onboard to collect samples of seabed sediment using a “piston core” device that we will lower through hundreds of meters of water, and they’re also flying in our helicopters each day to scour the Arctic for “dirty ice,” which is ice that has trapped sediment and looks, well, dirty.
After we completed our passenger transfers on Monday and set sail to the north we immediately hit very difficult ice conditions. HEALY backed and rammed for over a day to make just thirty miles through the “multi-year” ice. Multi-year ice is just what the name implies; ice that survived at least one Arctic summer and became exceptionally hard over the subsequent winters. It was in one such field where we found ourselves trapped after an enormous floe of multi-year ice (about the size of a large airport) trapped us against a similar floe on the other side of the ship. The ship was built for such an encounter, and was never in any danger. But we were stuck.
The steady east wind kept us in this bind until Saturday afternoon, when we finally broke free. The real credit for getting us out has to go to the crewmembers who, for over 24 hours, attacked a massive chunk of ice just astern of us with fire hoses. This steady onslaught of 48 degree water finally weakened this piece of ice (about the size of a garage) and allowed us to blast it away from us with wash from our propellers. Just this small amount of free water allowed us to back up a few yards and begin ramming the ice in front of us. 4 hours later we popped free of our predicament and headed north. Since then we’ve actually found better ice conditions than we were seeing closer to Barrow.
On Saturday night the Second Class Petty Officers commandeered the galley and gave the crew and guests a Mexican feast, which everyone enjoyed. We followed this with our first Big Screen Movie (Million Dollar Baby) shown in the hangar. Ensign Austin Carr, our medical officer, took over the Saturday Night Bingo duties and called out numbers which resulted in the following prizes being awarded:
Candy Round: SK2 Arakaki & MK3 Nesvold
Sleeping Bag: CPO Pudish
DVD & popcorn: LT Sacchetti
Ivory piece form Nome: YNC Kirby
Blackout consolation - Rice Krispy Treats: SK2 Arakaki
The 20” TV – our “blackout prize,” in bingo parlance – still has not been won. And Chief Pudish’s sleeping bag is only rated for 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so he is not allowed to take it outside.
We’ll continue our hunt for mud and dirt until next Sunday, when we go back to Barrow and offload our current science party and load the second party for a one-month mission.
HEALY beset in between two ice floes
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Training to find and fight a fire
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HEALY Crew using fire hoses to weaken ice pieces that were resting against the stern and rudders
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Scientist collecting 'Dirty Ice' sample while tethered to helicopter
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Polar Bear visitors
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Mother and cub showing curiosity in the big red ship
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