ITP 119 Deployment
ITP 119 was the first ITP deployed during the JOIS 2019 cruise, and was conducted from the fore deck A-frame on the CCGS Louis S. St. Laurent in open water but near an ice edge.
Two large aircraft straps were used to secure the ITP tripod winch to the base of the bongo winch and pointed towards the block on the A-frame. The ITP snatch block was hung from the bongo winch wire and block with pear link and shackle. ITP wire was paid out and placed into snatch block. Four anchor parts were assembled with shackle-pear-shackle arrangement (cotter pins included) and attached to bottom of ITP wire rope termination. The anchor parts were lifted with ITP winch drill motor hauling in on ITP wire over ITP snatch block. A-Frame out and anchors were lowered so upper anchor part was stopped off just below deck height with a length of VLS line that was tied off to A-frame base. ITP wire was paid out until enough slack was available under the A-frame to install the profiler on the wire rope.
The ITP was supported by hand as ITP winch was hauled in to take up slack and bring the lower bumper to deck height so i could set ITP IM coupler down on the bumper. Care was taken to make sure ITP CTD sensor never came in contact with snatch block above. A-frame out and VLS line was removed from upper anchor pear link. ITP was lowered into the water. Wire was paid out until approximately 10 wraps remain on the ITP reel. A Yale grip was applied to the mooring wire and load was transferred to stopper chain hanging from A-frame. Wire was removed from snatch block and snatch block was removed from bongo wire and bongo wire was secured. The remaining wire was walked off towards bow as the ITP upper potted section was removed from the reel. The potted section was fed through the bottom of surface package flotation and assembled to bottom of surface package and grounding plate and bail were assembled to lower potted section at the same time. There was much difficulty getting the grounding plate upper delrin clamp to fit over potted section diameter. The large ‘safety’ delrin clamp was placed near the bottom of the hose to prevent foam from sliding past end of potted section in a possible future recovery.
A red aircraft strap was assembled through the foam and around a surface package bail to keep the foam from sliding down during the next operation. A quick release was attached with one 4ft sling to ITP surface package bail and another 4ft sling to crane hook which was down in through the a-frame. A short piece of six strand rope was added to the lower 4ft sling so as not to lose sling during release. The ITP foam and surface package were lifted by crane up until upper mooring wire termination was ~1m above Yale grip. The remaining wire rope slack was slipped out through Yale grip until load was transferred to the crane and the Yale grip was removed from wire rope. The surface package was lowered to where a communication cable could be attached and several sections of DB-9 cable that were taped together so as to extend the communication cable for the communication check performed with laptop to verify communication from the surface package to the profiler via inductive loop was possible. After successful communication check, the surface package was raised back to working height and cable removed, dummy plug installed and cable pushed down into foam. The buoy was lowered into water and release pulled and operation was complete. The ITP drifted off towards ice edge and seemed to stop before getting to the edge and hold that relationship to the edge for a while.
