Expedition 320T: Sea Trials Transit

Week 3 Report (8-14 February 2009)

PDF file is available for download.

14 February 2009

Operations

The JOIDES Resolution (JR) spent 2.8 days port side, Apra, Guam. Seven Readiness Assessment Committee scientists joined the ship as well as five additional LDEO logging scientists, a wireline heave compensator vendor representative, two TAMU staff, and a vendor representative for the Asset Management System. One staff member for Entier, the catering contractor, boarded the vessel. Three TAMU personnel departed the ship in Guam. Port call activities included service work on elevator by vendor technician and service work on freezers by a local refrigeration company. HVAC work also continued with a vendor representative from Novenco. Additional vendor work on the elevator and HVAC system is scheduled for the Honolulu 1 port call. A complete US Coast Guard annual inspection was conducted. The ship passed with no deficiencies sited and very complimentary comments about condition of the ship. The JR departed Guam at 1354 hr on 9 February 2009 bound for Site 807 located on the Ontong Java Plateau.

Transit speed to Site 807 averaged 9.8 kts and was impacted somewhat by a strong but variable Northern Equatorial Current and erratic headwinds. Transocean personnel continued to troubleshoot and correct remnant shipyard deficiencies as well as getting the drilling package and subsea TV/sonar systems ready for operations.

Once on-site, the ship was placed under dynamic positioning control for the final maneuvering to the site. After some troubleshooting problems with two thrusters the re-entry cone was located. Reentry required only 13 min. from the time maneuvering was initiated until the bit was in the cone. However, the bit could not be advanced farther into the casing string when the operations and drill crews realized that the 11-7/16" APC/XCB bit was too big to fit inside the 11-3/4" casing string with an ID of 10.99". The drill string was recovered and BHA inspected. No damage was identified other than to the used APC/XCB bit. The unforeseen pipe roundtrip, and inability to marry APC coring with the logging tests in Hole 807C on a single pipe trip, necessitated changing the operational strategy. The BHA was switched over to an RCB configuration and tripped to the seafloor in preparation for drilling a dedicated wireline logging hole with some spot coring to ~550 mbsf.

Science and Analytical Systems Summary

The week began with a series of introductory presentations for the Readiness Assessment Committee varying from "Life on ship" (e.g., safety, getting around) to vessel capabilities, drilling, and wireline logging capabilities available on JR. Introductions to shipboard analytical systems and software applications began Monday morning and continued throughout the week with demonstrations and hands on activities. The daily science activities were briefly interrupted on Monday afternoon during the ship's departure from Guam.

During the first two days of transit to ODP Site 807, the Readiness Assessment Committee received introductions to key software applications including Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Sample Master (sample entering application), Descriptive data capture (DESCLogik), stratigraphic correlation (Correlator) and data retrieval (Web Tabular, LIMS2Excel, Crystal Reports). Following the introduction to software applications, the science team received demonstrations and hands on training of the shipboard analytical systems (chemistry and physical properties). In preparation for drilling and coring new Site U1330 at the location of Site 807, a complete core flow dry run was conducted with the USIO staff and the Readiness Assessment Committee. The Readiness Assessment Committee continued to evaluate and practice core processing using the shipboard analytical and software applications during the week.

USIO internal pre-acceptance activities and acceptance team meetings continued with substantial progress throughout the week in parallel to the Readiness Assessment activities. Acceptance testing was completed for several shipboard analytical systems, underway geophysics systems, paleontology facilities and software application packages. These include two physical property systems (P-wave gantry, Moisture and Density), two chemistry systems (Source Rock Analyzer, ICP-AES), micropaleontology facilities instrumentation and applications (microscopes, spot cameras, SPOT software and the Microscope Image and Metadata Capture (MIMEC) system), smear slides preparation and the SampleMaster software application. Testing continues for DESCLogik and Web Tabular Reports, LIMS2Excel software applications.

All pre-operations setup and tests for Wireline Heave Compensator performance evaluation have been completed successfully for the first operational test of the compensator. All logging tools have been tested.

HSE Activities

Fire and boat drills were conducted in port for personnel that boarded the ship in Guam as well as to satisfy final USCG requirements.

Transit Map