Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Ocean Interactions
Ocean and Atmosphere connecting Scientists, Teachers & Students

Ocean Interactions Crew, 2005

S.J. > Crew:

Dan Tim, The Seward Johnson's Deck Boss
Tales from the Sea

Thursday, Jan.20, 2005

Being a crew member at a vessel at sea means that your ship is your home away from home. Dan is the crew's deck boss that oversees any repairs that need to be taken care of. He is doing a lot of painting on this trip (but not as much as he did a few months ago—I'll explain why later). Normally deck hands have to operate the equipment for the scientists, such as winches and the A frame. On this trip most of the equipment is in containers that get hoisted onto the ship by crane. Once the containers are in place the scientists take care of the equipment. Dan grew up in the Vero Beach area of Florida. Dan's been on and around ships for about two years. I asked Dan if he had seen anything unusual in the time he'd been working on ships. He had three stories to tell.

Dan Tim

Ice-loving Scientists

On Dan's first trip to the Florida Keys he met two scientists from New Zealand. It was early in the trip and it started to get really hot outside. It was early June and the thermometer was creeping up in the 90's. He saw these two scientists take an empty garbage bucket and drag it into the galley. They began to fill it with ice. Dan thought they were preparing for an experiment, so he just let them go about their business. He noticed that they were using a lot of ice, and they also added dry ice. Then it was filled it to the top with water. Dan watched as they dragged it out to the back of the ship and started using it like a portable swimming pool! With the dry ice in it, it looked like steam was flowing off the top while the two New Zealanders and another scientists took turn jumping in and out of it!

Tale of Territory

On the Eric Thorsos trip to the Gulf of Mexico in 2004, a group of professional divers were underwater building a structure out of pipes. The purpose of the trip was to do a sea floor scan. A tube-like structure was set up on the ocean floor complete with a miniature railcar that moved sea floor scanning equipment. They suddenly had to leave the area for rough weather, but came back after two days. Dan said that a diver was back at work on the tubes, and he set his wrench up inside one of them. After a few moments you could hear a "clink clink" and the wrench would fall out of the opening. The diver repeatedly put the wrench back inside the pipe, only for it to be clattered about and pushcd out of the tube. Evidently, a territorial octopus decided he didn't like the divers wrench being put into his new doorway! The divers realized that a whole group of octopi had claimed the structure while they were gone. Dan went on tell me about how the scientists put a fish inside a glass jar, and opened it while the octopus watched. They put into the area another jar with a fish inside, and the octopus unscrewed the lid and opened it to get its dinner!

An Amazing Close Call

The Seward Johnson had gotten back to Ft. Pierce after a mission in the Carolinas. Hurricane Francis was forming. The ship needed to refuel, but due to the approaching hurricane they couldn't acquire any. The harbor itself runs east to west and the ship was docked at the concrete seawall. The ship was tied off onto pylons (these are like really fat telephone poles). One day before the hurricane was supposed to hit, Dan and the crew used a small boat to run extra lines to the other side of the canal to make the ship secure when the storm hit. The lines ran from both sides of the ship, a few going straight across the canal. They tied off the small boat and moved the ship 20 ft. off the seawall and tied the ship with 16 lines, with both anchors down in the mud. Dan said that when the storm was first approaching "It was pure silence." Winds started picking up at 40 m.p.h. out of the east at about 1:00 in the afternoon. Then the winds shifted coming out of north at 80 m.p.h. The biggest line off the bow snapped. Then the other lines went too, all but two of them! Dan said it was like someone took a chainsaw and snapped the lines off one by one. The only ones left were the ones on the stern. "We had to cut free the small boat, and what happened next was a total surprise." Dan explained, "The first mate told me to unleash the small boat, so I was doing that when suddenly the wind blew us out at 90 degree angle. What this means is the ship was parallel to the seawall and in the short time it took me to look down and look up again, the ship swung out facing south. After the boat was facing south, the captain floored the engines to keep us from swinging around. We had to chop the stern lines with a fire ax. All of this happened on the port side. Then the ship swung around and we tied off to the south side of the seawall on the pylons. However, these pylons were working themselves out of the saturated ground. Captain was actually steering the boat into the seawall to protect it from the winds, but unfortunately the small boat that was between the ship and the seawall and was crushed." "It actually saved us from any serious damage to the hull, but I had a lot of painting to do after that!" said Dan. That was my whole project the next two months! " When the pylons on the south side gave way, Kevin the engineer suggested they tie off to some palm trees on the south side. After this the crew had to make sure they didn't swing back across the canal again when the wind shifted out of the south. Dan grinned and said, "It was a once in a life time experience!" The Seward Johnson may have crushed the smaller boat, but in the end it saved the larger craft from serious damage. It is fortunate that no one was injured, and the crew was able to make quick and intelligent decisions during the dangerous landfall of hurricane Francis.