ITP 121 Deployment
ITP 121 was the first ITP deployment during JOPIS 20202 and went well but was much longer than expected. The ice encountered differed from the test 2” auger holes resulting in several 10” holes being drilled to find the right thickness. One Jiffy power head had clutch/drive issues and could not drill a wet slushy hole more than 1 m deep. The ice was not level enough and the heavy winch reel was difficult to align with the bearing blocks and winch brake. Also, the logistics in getting all parts on the ice took longer than needed as all operations required the use of the crane. Gear was located in the forward hold and some on the upper decks and due to the ice condition just next to the ship, the gangway could not be used and people were lowered via the man-basket. The SAMI was mounted 1.60 m below the rubber bumper termination on the wire with the SBE37IM-ODO directly below. In the end, ITP 121 was fully deployed 20 minutes before Dive 0, in ice 2.10 m thick. A S-IMB was deployed 10 m from the ITP site. The IBO deployment took almost 8 hours including the drilling of the extra 3 10” holes. Ice analyses were also performed by others in the science party while the deployment operations took place.
More information and photos on the deployment operations are also available at: https://www2.whoi.edu/site/beaufortgyre/expeditions/2020-expedition/2020-dispatches/dispatch-13-itp-deployment/
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.
