In Swedish, the word for awesome is the same as the word for canon.
KANON!
Yesterday was a kanon day as the Mars exploration team salvaged a kanon from the wreck site. The divers had been preparing for a few days now to salvage the back half of one of the smaller canons from the ship. The other pieces of wood that have been salvaged were lifted to the surface with divers’ lift bags, but the weight of the canon (solid bronze and iron) prevented that from being possible. Instead, they team used the winch from the Triad to pull the canon 60 meters to the surface.
The raising of the canon was a complicated process, as there were three divers involved who hooked the canon on to the line, and then followed the canon during its ascent. Now because divers have to go through a decompression period (meaning it takes them about 1.5 hours to come back to the surface after a 30 minute dive), we couldn’t just lift the canon straight up. Divers have to wait anywhere between 1 to 10 minutes at a variety of depths on their way back up to reacclimatize to the pressure.
This whole process was monitored by an ROV (remotely operated vehicle), driven by Oscar. I don’t know how one becomes an expert ROV pilot, but
Oscar is really good at maneuvering a giant yellow piece of metal 50 meters below the water’s surface. On the ROV is a camera which streams into the online room aboard the Triad, allowing us to follow the progress of the ascent. With hand signals from the divers, and light signals from the ROV, the canon slowly made its ascent. On the way up, Carl Douglas made faces at the ROV to keep us entertained (see picture).
Near the surface, the deck of the Triad filled with onlookers – divers from the other dive boats, marine archaeologists, professors, guns experts, and even a news reporter from the Swedish National News. The canon was lifted to shouts of KANON in both senses of the word.
Once onboard, the archaeologists and guns expert rushed to the canon, with looks of extreme glee, just like Christmas morning. Kanon.
By the end of the day, every one else headed back to shore for the night to celebrate with a bottle of champagne, while the crew of the Triad settled in for a quiet night over the wreck.
It turns out we made the evening news! The story of the canon salvage and Mars exploration was the second story on the 7:30 pm news, and not that I understand Swedish, but I think it was a good coverage of the project.
Now it’s Sunday, and the diving project is over. All the divers are headed home, and the Triad will slowly make its way in to harbor to unload a lot of the gear and equipment that is on board. All in all, its been a pretty kanon week.