Spring, 1991, revised Mar 22 1992
revised Mar 18 2011

Two weeks ago we had some friends up from The Dalles. After dinner we got the bright idea to drive to UW (University of Washington) to see a huge luxury yacht moored across from UW (it has a helicopter pad, several staterooms, etc. etc). We got to a dock across from the yacht, but the yacht was gone. But at the dock where we were was a huge research ship. We had seen it a couple weeks prior, going through the locks. We were admiring it and trying to guess what things on it were. As we were standing there, a uniformed man and a woman walked up. Cindy said "excuse me, do you happen to work on this ship?" "Yes, you could say that." (turned out that he was the ship's master!). Well, we questioned him some, then asked if they ever gave tours. He said, "No, not really. We're leaving at noon tomorrow for several weeks. Well,... would you like to see her now?" We JUMPED at the chance!

The M/V Laney Chouest is based in Louisiana. It has a 50 foot beam, 13 feet draft, and is 235 feet long. It has three shouded propellers at the stern as well as bow and stern thrusters for station keeping. The civilian crew of 12 often ships out with a Navy detachment to man the deep submersibles and/or scientists to operate the mapping and remotely piloted vessels. From the side, one sees two distinct above deck components. Forward is the traditional quarters/operations superstructure. The aft 1/2 has a 40'wide by 30'tall by 50'long box that shelters the submersibles when they're not in use. It also has quarters for the Navy detachment. Two decades after this tour, I've come across a note saying the ship is now sailing as ACERGY LEGEND, but there's been a line of vessels by this name, so this is not certain. I've also found records that she had been exploring the Juan de Fuca Ridge, Hydromthermal Vent Fields on Endeavor Segment.

None of the submersibles were present, but there was a HUGE arch shaped crane on the stern. It had a 50' fiber (Dacron or Nylon) line about 9" in diameter used to hoist the submersible to a locking attachment. Once a lock is achieved, the crane swings forward to deposit the submersible on a dolly that carries it into the shelter. A small cabin at the stern has subordinate controls for engine and rudders to control position during launch and retrieval.

As we wandered about I counted about ten Macintosh systems. Some of them, perhaps all, were tied together by a network. In addition, there was a HP9000/300 (moderate sized system) as part of a military Global Position System. The captain said he could look at the display, but not the inside. That was under control of the Navy. There was also a civilian GPS system. These, and a Loran, were used for station keeping. With the thrusters the ship could hold position to within about a meter. (When I was up in Sydney, B.C. I met a guy that was using GPS to compute the position of a barge off of Vancover Is. to a centimeter! The barge had sonar contact with beacons on the ocean floor and they were measuring creep. They collected satellite and sonor data and post-processed them to get the resolution.)

One of the ships duties was to prepare ocean floor topos. Their depth sounder could measure from side to side and they had a Data General system to compute the true depth after accounting for ships roll, tides, etc. and print a chart on a four foot wide plotter.

What with large hunks of steel (the submersibles) being shifted around, there were two 4x8' tables with indicators and switches to control fuel and ballast pumping.

The bridge had joy sticks in lieu of the wheel (actually wheel was present, just not used) to control postion and engine. The Coast Guard cutter I described earlier had the same setup. With all the trusters, I suppose one level of indirect control makes good sense. The rudder was two-speed in that it would quickly move to within about 5 degrees of desired position, then slowly move to the final position. This allowed finer control. There were also engine repeaters and other status displays.

Some of these controls were repeated at the aft of the bridge level. This was to allow control of the ship during some of their operations.

Below, we found the crews quarters to be attractive, roomy and well lit. There was a lounge with tv/video and paperback library. The messroom also had a TV. The galley reminded us of my folk's resort, with large cooking utensils. There were three conventional clothes washer/driers.