Split cable, which happened as the cable got twisted as it was being raised. Time for some repair.
That's what the Cable Repair ships did, right?
Cable Repair. After each of the wires had been spliced, they were placed in this machine which heated a plastic seal around each wire for protection 2 miles down.
One of the civilian cable guys. I wish I could remember his name, as he was a pretty nice guy, and was happy to teach us about what he was doing.
You can see a completed splice of
2 wires between his hands.
Now you see it! About 2 miles of cable, temporarily stored on the grating deck. Then, as it got dark, the seas began to pick up :-(
Now you don't! During the night, we could hear the cable coils sliding back and forth. Then during a particularly heavy roll: Crash!
This is what we saw at dawn!
A group of the Deck guys trying to secure the remaining cable and wire rope (used to anchor in deep water). We also lost our only cable cutter, visible in the first photograph, and our custom quarterdeck shack.
Snow!! I took this shot for my parents. This is a blurry shot, because the picture was taken
just before dark...it was actually darker than this looks!
One of the P3 Orions we worked with. This one was from Moffit Field in California. Some were out of Hawaii. The Orion is the military verson of the Lockheed Electra.
Raul Olivas and Stan Gordon, goin' for a stroll on the main deck :-)
Cable and Wire Rope: Anchored in what was usually 2 miles of water.
Freezing my butt off on lookout duty. This was probably somewhere in the Bearing Sea. We never got quite up to the Arctic Circle, but were close.
Ah! Christmas on the Neptune! Actually, we were in port in Alameda, but the decorations went up while we were still out to sea.
A sonobouy. Usually dropped from an aircraft, we had to whack them on the bottom to activate them, before tossing them over the side.
The whacker is Kelly Wallen.
Another sunset at sea. One of the (few) nice things about being at sea was that it was always fresh and clean (no smog, etc).
And a sunrise, as the Neptune heads east on the way back home.