An Unscheduled Repair in the Middle of the Ocean for RU-27

August 2009 was a rough but ultimately triumphant month for the Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory’s trans-Atlantic glider, RU-27, the Scarlet Knight. After passing the spot where in October 2008 its predecessor, RU-17, was lost, the glider began spinning like a top as it descended and ascended.

Professors Scott Glenn and Oscar Schofield, their colleagues, and students were losing control of the glider in mid-ocean, and didn’t know why.

Rutgers technicians Chip Haldeman, and Tina Haskins and contract diver/photographer Dan Crowell were sent out to the mid-Atlantic to find out what was wrong.  Dena Seidel, an instructor in Rutgers’ Writers House who, with her students, is making a documentary about the trans-Atlantic glider project, went along to record their efforts. After a day of flying, they reached Horta, on the Azores island of Faial, and joined the 50-foot sailing yacht Nevertheless for a 30-hour sail out to the glider, communicating with the COOL room by satellite phone. Once they found the glider, they bounced out to it in a rubber dingy.

“What we noticed right off was that the new rubber coating on the hull was working like a champ,” Haskins said. “The glider was still yellow, and we thought it would be brown and green and hairy all over, but it was still bright yellow.” Click here for Haskins' own description of the mission.

Goose-neck barnacles, ranging from a few centimeters to two inches long, however, had attached themselves to the seams where sections of the hull join together. Haskins called marine engineer David Aragon, in New Brunswick, to send the glider on a dive. Crowell followed it down with an underwater video camera, and documented that, indeed, the glider was spinning as it descended.

While Crowell Seidel recorded their work on video, Haldeman and Haskins set about scraping off the barnacles. They were done in 15 minutes, and with dark coming on, called it a day.

The next day, after Haldeman attached a 100-foot rope and a buoy to the glider, Aragon commanded it to dive. RU-27 sank a few inches into the water and wallowed there. At Glenn’s direction over the satellite phone, Haldeman sank the glider by force,  hurling himself upon it.  The glider went down, but, once hitting the end of its rope, it refused to come up and had to be reeled in. Haldeman then fastened a 100-gram detachable handle to the hull, but the glider still refused to dive.

Finally, after a multi-level teleconference – Haskins on the Nevertheless shouting and gesturing to Haldeman in the water, Aragon talking to Haskins on the satellite phone from the lab, Glenn and Oscar Schofield, also in the lab, talking to Aragon and to the an engineer at Teledyne Webb Research, the glider’s manufacturer, on a speaker phone – they decided to add more weight using strips of lead sheeting a bit thicker than a piece of paper.

Aragon cut strips of lead and weighed them, and then instructed Haskins on how much lead to cut. Haldeman swam out to the glider and taped the strips to the hull. Eventually, this worked. The glider dove and surfaced on command. After several tests and more multi-level communication, Glenn and Schofield asked the technicians to remove the rope and the lead sheeting. Now, minus its barnacles but carrying its 100-gram handle as a souvenir, the Scarlet Knight resumed its journey. Click here for the frequently updated scientists' blog about the mission of the Scarlet Knight.