Water Logged
Day 30: Final Days
By Andrew Weir (10/02/02)
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The stern of the MONTANA looking forward. |
Today, the second day of October, marks the beginning of ECU's final days in Missouri. The team spent much of their day making sure all the important aspects of the site were recorded and no holes were present in our data. Things are coming together quite nicely for the team. Two of the primary objectives for the day were the exposing of the port side main rudder and the mapping of the site using a transit and an EDM (Electronic Distant Measurer). |
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The rudder was deeply buried in river sediment and is positioned right at the interface between the Missouri River and the shore. This presented a couple of problems. The first, and the most difficult to overcome, was that most of the rudder rested below the waterline, which made the use of a shovel out of the question. To compensate for this, the crew used an underwater dredge system to remove the sediment. This process worked perfectly and the team was able to accurately map the details of the rudder structure.
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Chris Valvano and Dr. Dasovich make a final visual survey of the portions of the wreck that are still submerged. |
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Jackie Piero and Sam Blake continue to map along the centerline of the steamer. |
The other primary objective of the day was the mapping of the site. This was done using a transit and EDM. To do this one person had to stand with a stadia rod with a prism on top at the spot that needed to be mapped while another stood at the transit and recorded the angle and distance from the transit unit to the rod. These numbers will be used at night to create a smaller, scaled version of the site on map paper. This will be used to tie the vessel remains to the environment that surround the site. Things are winding down at the site; stay tuned to see how everything ends up. |
